Case Studies In TRIZ: Re-Inventing Gravy And Sauces - Systematic ...

Case Studies In TRIZ: Re-Inventing Gravy And Sauces
Darrell Mann
Director, Systematic Innovation Ltd, UK
Phone: +44 (1275) 337500
E-mail: darrell.mann@systematic-innovation.com
Abstract
The paper describes a project, undertaken with a European client, to re-invent a
convenience food category. The client is an established player in the private label
market, and wanted to build a new brand. The project has thus far spanned the
identification, creation and verification of both product and associated packaging and
branding. The main aim of the paper is to show where TRIZ was useful, where it
wasn’t, and what was used to fill the gaps.
Introduction
The project started with a question from a UK manufacturing company. The
company is a successful smaller-sized processed food manufacturer based in the
UK. The company has around 150 employees and an annual turnover of around
$50M. They mainly produce dry-powder or granule convenience food mixes – instant
sauce mixes, cakes, gravy, thickeners, sweeteners, etc – and most of them are sold
as private label products by the country’s large supermarket chains. The question the
manufacturer posed was ‘how do we create a product brand in the sauce and gravy
business?’ Everything that followed started from that question.
The project team comprised 4 people from the Systematic Innovation organisation,
including network partners specialising in turnkey new product development projects
in and around the fast-moving consumer goods arena. The team worked in close
proximity to the senior management at the client starting in Summer 2007.
The aim was to achieve market launch by the second quarter of 2008. The company
had a full order book for its current product range throughout the project and
because they were operating in the tight-margin environment of private label, the
available budget for the project was relatively low.
The remainder of the paper describes the sequence of events from the initial
question to the point, 75% of the way through the project where the aim has been to
find the ‘right’ product and brand proposition. The story begins with the first team
working session and the ‘create a gravy product brand’ question:
Stage 0: The Very-Fuzzy-Front End
Architects probably have to solve some of the most complex problems in the modern
world. They often talk about ‘finding their way in’ to a project. What they are trying to
do is fix a few points of the design in order that they can at least begin to manage the

enormous number of variables present in any building project. Although not quite on
the scale of some of the projects taking place in Dubai at the moment, the gravy
project nevertheless felt very fuzzy during the first session.
Our chosen ‘way in’ to the project was to conduct a simple Why-What’s Stopping
Analysis. We could have chosen more rigorous tools (such as Perception Mapping),
and indeed kept open the possibility that we still would, but the pressing need
seemed to be to obtain a better understanding of the hierarchy of problems and
opportunities. We expected this at least would tell us whether the job was going to be
about re-defining the whole company or to change the labelling on an existing
product. A summarised output from the session is presented in Figure 1:
Broader P roblem
S ustainable profit
Increasing margins,
increasing business
stability
Why do I want to solve
this problem?
Why else?
Original P roblem(start here)
create a gravy product
brand
Narrower P roblem
C reating a self-building
brand requiring
little budget
creating a low-cost,
novel (protectable)
G ravy innovation
What’s s topping me
solving this problem?
What else?
L imited budget
available
L ack of unique
selling proposition
Figure 1: Initial Why-What’s Stopping Analysis
The main output from this template is the hierarchy of problems found up the central
spine of the picture. Upon closer examination, the consensus view of the team and
the client that the level the gravy problem had to be tackled was ‘how to generate
some kind of unique solution that would make the product stand out in such a way
that the brand would build itself’. This became the ‘obvious’ problem simply because
of the limited brand-building budget and the knowledge that building a brand in the
FMCG sector is notoriously expensive. At least traditionally. The next question was
whether anyone had solved a similar problem before.
We used a template combining elements of TRIZ and Blue Ocean Strategy in order
to add some structure to a search (Reference 1). This template was designed initially
to help companies to decide where they should innovate. Three innovation spaces
are included in the template:
a) Find a ‘blue ocean’ space where no-one else is playing
b) Make use of a strong trend direction, singularity or trend conflict
c) Solve a contradiction
The basic idea behind the structure is that the more of these three things present in
an innovation, the more likely it is to be successful. By doing all three things
companies create the biggest chance of creating a breakthrough success. Figure 2
illustrates where some of the most successful FMCG innovations of recent times fit
onto the template. Danone Actimel, for example, is a good example of a stellar
success that has simultaneously played in all three spaces – they found a blue
ocean by creating a new ritual of drinking a yogurt at breakfast; they tapped into

strong consumer drives towards both increasing health consciousness and also
desire for extreme convenience; and with L.Cassei Immunitas they made consumers
aware of and ‘solved’ the contradiction of ‘good bacteria’.
Figure 2: Beyond Blue Ocean – Who’s Already Solved A Similar Problem?
Reflect on this template and some of the examples from the perspective of ‘who
achieved their success without having a large brand-building budget’, two examples
stood out from the rest; Innocent and Red Bull. Innocent is the more recent of the
two and as yet a phenomenon only in the UK. Innocent make smoothies that are
‘100% fruit, 100% natural, 100% of the time’. As such they are very clearly tapping in
to the same health consciousness trend that Actimel uses so successfully. Innocent
have the additional advantage here though that there is a parallel government health
initiative to get people eating their ‘5 a day’ portions of fruit and vegetables. Innocent
also plays in the ‘solve a contradiction’ space. With strong parallels to Virgin this
time, their very similar name is intended to send the clear message that this is not
the usual big-business company. A name is one way of sending out this message.
Using 100% recycled packaging and giving away 10% of their profits to a charitable
foundation was a more tangible way of convincing the consumer that here, unlike
other big companies, was a brand that stood for being cast from a different mould.
Aside from direct ideas growing from Innocent (e.g. create the savoury/gravy version
of the Innocent smoothie), the template told us that the low-budget brand building
challenge probably required us to play in at least two of the three spaces:
Stage 0.5: The Slightly-Less-Fuzzy-Front-End – Voice Of The Product
Next we embarked on a TRIZ analysis of the current products produced by the
company. The intent here was to define opportunities in the ‘solve a contradiction’

space on the Figure 2 template. Solving a contradiction means either literally doing
that (i.e. using the Contradiction Matrix/Inventive Principles) or more generally
making some kind of discontinuous jump. In order to explore the ‘jump’ space, a
‘Voice Of The Product’ (Reference 2) analysis was conducted for both product and
packaging. The results of the initial analysis is shown in the Evolution Potential radar
plots in Figure 3.
evolution jumps to
powders, pastes &
ready-mades
Figure 3: Gravy Granule and Packaging – Current Evolutionary State
Also shown in the plots are some of the jumps being made by competitors in the
market space. Although a more detailed analysis revealed that the gravy-mix industry
as a whole had been relatively static for a good number of years (there had in fact
been just two trend jumps since the 1950s), it was also seen that competitors had
jumped and that the manufacturer had not.
Based on the untapped potential, the team conducted a short ‘trend-storm’ exercise
in order to identify some of the possible jumps that the gravy granules themselves
and the surrounding packaging could make. Proprietary restrictions prevent us from
describing all of the ideas generated, but here are some of the ideas and the trends
that the idea emerged from in order to provide a flavour of the outcome of this
session:
• Hollow/porous granules (improved dissolution; Space Segmentation)
• Addition of vitamins/other nutrients (added nutrition; Mono-Bi-Poly)
• Different colours (emphasise multi-functionality; Increasing Colour)
• Segmented flavour/thickening (ease of use; Action Co-ordination)
• Active elements (effervescence/improved dissolution; Smart Materials)
• Transparent packaging (pre-purchase visibility; Increasing Transparency)
• Segmented packaging (separate ingredients; Space Segmentation
• Colour-change packaging (increased feedback; Smart Materials)
All in all, this ‘Voice of the Granule’/’Voice of the Packaging’ exercise saw the
generation of over a hundred possible future evolution directions. When we
attempted a short contradiction analysis to complement this activity (typical
examples: we want fresh-and-long-life, easy-to-make-and-authentic), the number of

ideas increased further. This quantity of ideas turned out to be more of a problem
than a solution to the innovation/brand challenge. In order to help solve that problem
the team moved next to the other side of the ‘Voice’ story and to the second space
on the Figure 2 ‘where to innovate’ template:
Stage 0.5: The Slightly-Less-Fuzzy-Front-End – Voice Of The Customer
We were at the beginning of day three of the project by this stage. What we were
now looking for was a ‘quick and dirty’ perspective on ‘the consumer’. We knew we
wanted to do this as we didn’t have the time or resources to test a hundred different
concepts with real consumers. The chosen starting point was a high level look at
societal patterns. The closest thing to TRIZ in this area is the Fourth Turning work on
generational cycles conducted by US historians William Strauss and Neil Howe
(Reference 3). Figure 4 plots a graph of some of the more recent generations,
adjusted for differences between the UK and US.
Figure 4: Generation Cycles For The Last 60 Years
The basic finding of the Fourth Turning research is that societies pass through
repeating generational cycles. The ultimate in order emerging from chaos; the way
we were brought up as children in turn affects the way that we bring up our own
children; the way our friends were brought up likewise affects us as we affect them.
One big, fuzzy self-organizing system - according to Strauss and Howe. Incidentally
our own ongoing research programme in the UK (Reference 4). Figure 4 contains a
lot of information. Let’s start with the diagonal lines. These denote the boundaries
between generations and also the trajectory of a person’s life. Someone born in 1962
is thus seen to be right on the boundary between what turned out to be the Baby
Boomer and X generations. In 2008 that person born in 1962 has followed the line up
the ‘age’ y axis, and is therefore now 46. Parallel to this generational boundary is the
more recent shift between Generation X and Generation Y (Y babies were born
during the period ~1982-2000). This is significant in the context of the gravy problem.
If we look at the state of the generations in 2008, we see there are some significant

cross-over points by the intersection between the generational boundaries and the
vertical 2008 line. The most important one as far as gravy is concerned is that the
oldest of the Generation Y cohort are now becoming parents. Also potentially
significant:
• a new (as yet un-named) generation is in their early youth and being
exposed to gravy for the first time
• the grandparents of this generation are typically Baby Boomers (this is
potentially significant since gravy - at least in the UK - is closely associated
with Sunday dinners where families traditionally get together)
• Generation X parents, now in their late 30s and 40s have generally been
brought up to fend for themselves which typically meant not-cooking, but
rather eating out. We had to speculate how this generation of non-cooks
(albeit ones that are now starting to feel guilty about it) impacted on the
use of gravy.
It is our belief that all consumer trends emerge from these generational patterns
(Reference 5), so in terms of our ‘where to innovate’ objective of finding important
consumer trends and trend conflicts, we used the Figure 4 data to help focus the
search for such conflicts. Again, the main aim in this paper is to describe a process
rather than specific and proprietary answers, but some of the items emerging from
this study were as follows:
• Generation X guilt plus protected-in-youth Generation Y parents are the
source of the increasing reaction to sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy diet
trends. The ‘five portions a day’ phenomenon is a direct result of these
directions and trying to solve the conflict of a generation of parents who
can’t cook.
• Because there is also a strong trend toward single parent families and
more travel, the ‘family dinner’ happens less frequently and when it does
happen it is more likely to be at a restaurant than at home
• The new generation currently in early childhood is less likely to be exposed
to gravy – and very definitely home-made gravy – than the two preceding
generations.
• The Silent generation were the most recent ones for whom ‘gravy’ was a
significant feature of a meal. ‘Gravy’ again in the UK is perceived often as
the ‘best’ part of a dinner; the part containing both the goodness (it is
usually made from the water in which vegetables are cooked) and also as
a ‘mask’ for often flavourless things underneath. In large part this
perception exists because the Silent generation was first exposed to gravy
during their early youth – at the same time World War 2 and all of its food
rationing was happening. Today the Silent generation are heading into the
great-grandparent role and as such are quite remote from family life.
• If the Silent generation was a gravy generation, the generation that
followed them grew up in a time of more abundance, freedom and a desire
to travel. Baby boomers were thus exposed to different foods from around
the globe. As such, it seems likely that the importance of gravy was
significantly lower than it had been for the Silents.
• The main traditional purchasers of gravy mixes, being women responsible
for a family, are currently in transition from Generation X to Generation Y.

Stage 1 Gate: The Fuzzy-Front-End – Short-List Of Concepts
Once we started the job of matching Voice Of The Customer issues with Voice Of
The Product ideas and concepts, we had the basis for drawing up a short-list of
solutions we thought needed to be taken forward and exposed to consumers.
Our aim at this review was to identify a maximum of nine product concepts that
would be taken forward to consumer trial. To some extent this number was fixed no
more scientifically than by the available budget. On the other hand, one thing we did
try and do during the review was to effectively create a ‘design of experiments’ menu
of product concepts which in turn, using a 4x4 Taguchi matrix allowed us to explore
the significance of four different technical variables. The thinking behind this was that
instead of getting a yes/no good/bad result for each of the nine, we should be able to
assess the significance of different constituent parts of each concept.
Stage 1: Consumer Insight Sessions
What we learned from the initial Voice Of The Customer sessions was that getting
the perspectives of the different generations was going to be relevant. So when we
were configuring who should be present during the sessions, we made sure we had
statistically relevant levels of representation from Generations X and Y and Baby
Boomers. The other main dimension used to select members of the insight sessions
was Spiral Dynamic thinking level (Reference 5). This was something of a departure
from tradition (normally the industry standard A, B, C, D social classification
framework is used), one that was justified on the grounds that a) we knew how to
cross-correlate between the two frames of reference, and b) we had a stronger
database to connect between the Spiral Dynamic levels and consumer trends at
large.
Without wishing to complicate the description more than is necessary, another
variable we felt it was important to explore was the cultural and behavioural
differences between different regions of the UK. Specifically between the ‘North’ and
‘South’ of the country.
Over 30 insight sessions were held in different places and with different consumer
groups, each session having between 12 and 20 participants. Participants were
placed in either kitchen or supermarket settings and the nine storyboards were used
as the basis for informal interview discussions. Recognising the frequently observed
phenomenon that consumers on these sorts of panel usually provide the answers
they think the panel wants to hear rather than what they actually thought, the
interview sessions were conducted in such a way as to counter the effect as much as
possible (see Reference 7 for some insight into the methods deployed).
A period of data analysis followed the completion of the first 30 sessions. This
analysis revealed a number of insights that were in turn used to help design a
subsequent series of deep-dive immersion trials, putting a number of key consumer
archetypes in prolonged exposure experiments. For example, in one of the more
extreme experiments a family was denied access to gravy during all of their meals for
a week.
We’ve barely been able to begin to describe the full extent of this work here; but the
duration of this part of the programme was close to four months.

It often seems almost cruel to then be able to distil all of this activity down to insights
that can be summarised in a sentence. However that is what the team was able to
do. As might be expected, it cost a significant amount of time and money to obtain
those insights and so the reader will forgive us for not revealing what we found here.
Suffice to say that the team found some real innovation ‘nuggets’ – insights which
identified some very clear contradictions that (if they could be solved) were highly
likely to create genuine breakthrough solutions, not just in the gravy arena, but also
in a number of surrounding areas. Suffice to say also that, as far as the innovation
process is concerned we were able to make some clear and justifiable
recommendations from the Voice of the Product menu of concepts to the company’s
senior management team.
Stage 2 Gate: The ‘Right’ Proposition
Whether the underlying contradictions behind the consumer insight will ever be made
public remains to be seen. What will be seen are the new products that were
presented to the management and subsequently approved for a further round of
consumer testing. This time, with actual taste-right, look right products.
The Stage 2 gate review was also an opportunity to bring together initial thoughts on
pricing structure, route to market, brand design and preferred methods of promotion
and advertising. Again the limited space here has no intention or ability to do justice
to the size and scope of this work. TRIZ, as it turns out, was explicitly brought back
into the story for what turned out to be a day’s worth of identifying the most
appropriate manufacture technology for what looks like being the eventual product
concept, but this is again a tiny proportion of a much bigger activity. Figure 5 gives a
helicopter view of both this TRIZ injection and the other times that TRIZ was explicitly
utilised through the project.
S tage 0 Definition
J un-07 J ul-07 Aug-07 S ep-07 Oct-07 Nov-07 Dec-07 J an-08 F eb-08 Mar-08 Apr-08 May-08 J un-08
(TR IZ )
S tage G ate R eview
Initial C onsumer Insight S essions
Analysis
Deeper-Dive Insight S essions
S tage G ate R eview
(TR IZ )
Detail F ormulation
P rototype & P ackaging
C onsumer Trials
R oute To Market C hannels
Advertising/ Brand S trategy
S tage G ate R eview
P roduction P lanning & C ontract
P roduct L aunch
Figure 5: Overall Project Timescale Chart Showing TRIZ Injections
TRIZ accounted for about 2% of the total in person-hour terms. Given the work that
still has to be done to get the new product to market, it does not look as if this figure
will increase.
The bar chart also shows that the project - at the time this paper had to go to press -
was still some months away from launch. Given that the failure rate of new product

launches in the FMCG sector is globally in the high 90 percents, and in the UK is
presently around 98%, this looks and feels like a risky case study to put forward as
an example of ‘what TRIZ did’.
Whether the project turns out to be a success or not (the team is convinced that we
will be in the 2% of successes), the point here is not about ‘what TRIZ did’ but rather
what it ‘did not’ do.
All of the team agree that TRIZ played a necessary role in setting the project in the
right direction. It took a lot of the fuzziness from the project. It also, in forcing the
team to think about continually looking for and challenging contradictions, ensured
that everyone was focused on asking the right innovation questions throughout. But
then 98% worth of ‘other’ activity starts to look like the 800lb gorilla in the room.
Which might just be the main point.
Summary
Although the new-brand story is still ongoing at the time of writing, the project is close
enough to the end to merit making some generic conclusions.
TRIZ was used at the fuzzy beginning of the project to generate an understanding of
what the real question was and then a portfolio of ‘Voice Of The Product’ ideas.
Having used this Voice to generate close to a hundred ideas on possible directions
that the gravy product and packaging could evolve, it was then necessary to
determine which of those directions were the most likely to succeed in the UK
market. At this point, TRIZ – classical TRIZZ at least – was deemed to offer little if
any capability. In order to at least begin asking the ‘which?’ question, we turned to a
number of Voice Of The Customer tools. These tools included Spiral Dynamics,
Fourth Turning, Culture Codes and NLP. What they did was provide the project team
with insights into what questions they in turn should be asking when it came to the
point of actually asking the customer on a face-to-face basis. Once actual consumer
insight had been acquired and it was felt that the ‘Voice Of The Customer’ was
sufficiently understood, it was possible to perform another iteration of matching the
Customer and Product voices. Having made what seem to be the best connections,
a final round of TRIZ-related work was required in order to help identify the most
appropriate technology for manufacturing the product.
In terms of proportion of project duration, given its use at the fuzzy front end of the
project and again towards the end in helping to identify appropriate manufacture
technology, (as quoted earlier) TRIZ was utilised for somewhere around 2% of the
actual calendar time. In some ways this should be seen as a testament to the power
of TRIZ. It did important things that would otherwise either not have been done at all
or would have taken a lot longer. Whilst it is true that exposure to TRIZ had an
influence on the project team for the remaining 98% of the project time, it remains
clear that there are an awfully large number of necessary innovation steps that are
well beyond the traditional TRIZ boundaries.
Ultimately TRIZ formed a necessary but fundamentally insufficient part of the overall
product and brand development process. So what might a necessary and sufficient
innovation toolkit and philosophy comprise? To some extent – of course – the
answer depends on the problem at hand. Different types of problems require
different types of tools. What appears clear is that there is almost always going to be
a need to look at situations from both the customer and the ‘product’ side, and that

ultimately these two things have to be connected together. Aside from the general
conceptual concept of Ideality, TRIZ has little to contribute at the detailed level. For
problem situations where the ‘customer’ is one or a small number of people then this
may not be such a big problem. On the other hand, for products like gravy where the
‘customer’ is potentially many millions of consumers, the need for more structured
and comprehensive approaches appears more than clear. Things like Spiral
Dynamics and Fourth Turning certainly help, but ultimately Thomas Edison might
have hit the nail on the head when he said that innovation was 1% inspiration and
99% perspiration. Crudely speaking, with TRIZ we doubled the ‘inspiration’ content of
this project. Here’s hoping that that investment appreciably better than double our
chances of a successful market introduction.
References
1) Systematic Innovation E-Zine, ‘Beyond The Blue Ocean’, Issue 70, January
2008.
2) Mann, D.L., ‘Unleashing The Voice Of The Product And The Voice Of The
Process’, paper presented at TRIZCON06, Milwaukee, May 2006.
3) Strauss, W., Howe, N., ‘The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy’, Bantam,
1998.
4) Systematic Innovation, ‘Generational Cycles’ series, every issue since
September 2007.
5) Graves, C.W., ‘The Never Ending Quest’, ECLET Publishing, Santa Barbara,
2005.
6) Rapaille, C., ‘The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why
People Around the World Buy and Live as They Do’, Broadway Books, 2007.