TRIZ-Based SYSTEMATIC INNOVATION Value-Conflict Mapping ...

I C GTRIZ-Based SYSTEMATICINNOVATIONTraining MaterialsValue-Conflict Mapping (VCM)© 2008 Valeri SouchkovICG Training & Consulting1

Value-Conflict Mapping (VCM) To Defineand Structure Innovation StrategyValeri SouchkovICG Training & Consulting, The NetherlandsNovember 2008, Updated: January 20091 INTRODUCTIONEvolution of any technological or business product is driven by three large groups of impactingfactors:• Voice of market: all demands and requirements which are comprised by existing andemerging demands, new trends, new developments, changes in a product’s supersystem.• Voice of business: each business organization is interested in growth as well as in the mosteffective and efficient production and delivery of its products and services.• Voice of technology: internal drivers of technology evolution, new technologicaldevelopments, emerging technologies, scientific discoveries, technology diversification.Today virtually every organization, no matter what type of material products or immaterialservices it delivers, relies heavily on underlying technologies to create new value: it can be eithera new manufacturing technology for producing steel pipes or new telecommunication and dataprocessing technologies used by an insurance company.The dialectic approach to evolution states that each time, soon after a balance between thesegroups of factors is achieved, some factor will change and the only adequate response by abusiness system would be to innovate: either on a product or a business side (e.g. a new businessmodel). It is well known in TRIZ that in order to create a breakthrough innovation, we need toeliminate a contradiction which blocks further evolution of a current system, which can be either atechnical product, or a business service. However, emergence of contradictions is not limited totechnical requirements and parameters only. There is always a large group of cross-disciplinarycontradictions between these three voices. For example, a mass market demands ordinarylightweight bicycles for comfort and easier riding; but a company producing these bicycles isinterested in reducing material costs which would be not possible to achieve if the bicycles woulduse lightweight composite materials which are still too expensive today. Thus a good knowntechnical solution can not be used due to a limiting business constraint.To correctly define future innovation strategy related to the customer’s business, one needs todesign a map which would establish and structure relationships between all types of contradictionsto be able to identify those contradictions which should be resolved within short and long terms.To create such maps, we developed and introduced a technique called “Value-Conflict Mapping”which is presented below.Value-Conflict Mapping has been developed in parallel and incorporates some basic ideas ofOTSM-TRIZ and is based on a similar idea to networking contradictions. On the other side, itintroduces an approach to mapping market demands to contradictions as well as mapping thecontradictions to new demands.2

2 VALUE-CONFLICT MAPPINGIn general, Value-Conflict Mapping (VCM) is designed to help with extracting and linkingtechnological, business and market contradictions. VCM proposes a process of direct mapping ofexisting demands and market trends to relative values of properties or parameters of existingproducts or services, and then identifying the existing contradictions and revealing potential(“hidden”) contradictions by a procedure of value inversion. Thus a central idea of VCM is todefine how the existing technological or business products and systems contradict to business andmarket demands, trends, and requirements.There might be three groups of contradictions:1) Between two specific market demands put on the same system’s part. For instance, anautomotive light should have both high intensity of light (to better lit a road in the dark)and low intensity (to avoid blinding of other drivers). Most of contradictions in technicalsystems and products arise at the level of market demands or can be translated to them.2) Between a market and a business demands. For example, a plane must be checked verythoroughly during airport parking to ensure safety of a flight. However it requiresincreasing the number of technicians and parking time which would negatively influencerevenues of the airline.3) Between two business demands. For example, a supermarket management considersbringing more employees to the supermarket floor to help customers with better productchoice. However it requires increasing the number of sales assistants which wouldnegatively impact profit margin of the supermarket.In general, VCM is performed by completing the table which consists of the following columns(Table 1):1) A market demand or a market trend.2) A part of a system responsible for fulfilling the demand or the trend.3) A parameter (property, attribute, feature) which is responsible for fulfilling the demand orthe trend.4) A desired relative value of a parameter.5) Index of Satisfaction of each demand.6) Business demand which is associated with the parameter.#MARKETDEMANDSUBSYSTEMPROPERTY(PARAMETER)RELATIVE VALUEINDEX OFSATISFACTIONBUSINESSDEMANDA customer/marketdemand or amarket trendwhich isbecoming ademandA part of a system(subsystem)responsible formeeting thedemand. Can be awhole system aswell.A property(parameter) which isresponsible formeeting the demand.It is associated with asubsystem defined inthe left column.A desired relativevalue of aproperty/parameter to fulfillthe demand (e.ghard, soft, high,low, etc.)Index of currentmarket demandsatisfaction:+: good0: can be improved-: not satisfactoryA businessdemand whichcontradicts amarket oranotherbusinessdemanddemand (if any)Table 1: A typical string in a VCM Table3 VALUE-CONFLICT MAPPING PROCESSAlthough the key ideas and techniques which belong to VCM can be used in various contexts,below we show a process of using VCM in combination with the TRIZ trends of Technology(Business) Evolution (depending on which system is analyzed: technical or business). The entireprocess consists of two parts: Analytical Part and Ideas Generation and Landscaping part (Figure1).3

#Short walking timeGoods must be freshAll goods are to have nutritional infoHigh quality of adviceFun shoppingKids entertainmentNo waiting in linesAttractive pricingAlways availableClear visualization “what where”Broad selection of discounted goodsNo crowds…MARKET DEMANDBroad selection of goodsQuick advice from the personnel#Short walking timeGoods must be freshAll goods are to have nutritional infoHigh quality of adviceFun shoppingKids entertainmentNo waiting in linesAttractive pricingAlways availableClear visualization “what where”Broad selection of discounted goodsNo crowds…MARKET DEMANDBroad selection of goodsQuick advice from the personnelGoodsGoodsPackagesPersonnelPersonnelEntertaining personnelPersonnelGoodsGoodsSignsGoodsShopping space…SUBSYSTEMShopping spaceEntertainment areaAreaDiversityNumberSizeNumberNumberPriceNumberSizePriceArea…PROPERTYExpiration timeInformationCompetenceLongMuchHighHighHighHighHighHighLowLarge…VALUESmallLargeLargeLargeIS-+0-----+-+--+…#C1C1C1C1C2C2C2C3C3C4C4C5C5C6C6C7C7C8C8C9C9C9Short walking timeNo crowdsBroad selection of goodsProducts freshnessQuick advice from the personnelHigh quality of adviceFun shoppingNo waiting in linesAlways availableAttractive pricesMARKET DEMANDBroad selection of discounted goodsShopping spaceShopping spaceShopping spaceShopping spaceGoodsGoodsGoodsPersonnelPersonnelPersonnelPersonnelEntertainment areaEntertainment areaEntertaining personnelEntertaining personnelCashiersCashiersGoodsGoodsGoodsGoodsGoodsSUBSYSTEMAreaAreaAreaAreaExpiration timeExpiration timeExpiration timeNumberNumberCompetenceCompetenceSizeSizeNumberNumberNumberNumberNumberNumberPricePricePricePROPERTYSmallLargeSmallLargeShortLongLongHighLowHighLowLargeSmallHighLowHighLowHighLowHighLowLowVALUEBUSINESS DEMANDLow Rental costsAvoid product lossLow-cost storageCost savingCost savingRental costsCost savingCost savingNo product lossHigher marginTireWheelFrameLightElasticityHollownessDiameterWeightBrightnessHighLowHighLowLargeSmallhighlowhighlowSmooth runningLonger lifetimeNo need to replaceNo sail effectHigher stiffnessEasy to cycleEasy to maintainEasy to carryHigh strengthEasy to carryEasy to rideBetter visibilityLess energyLess blindingCustomer/MarketHigher revenuesCheaper to manufactureEasy to transportlow costshigher revenuesBusinessIDEA PERFORMANCE INDICATOR105TransparencyParty liquorsCoffee liquorsIdeas worth checkingJuice Drinks0.5 yearsIdeas to check firstShaving CreamFancy colorsPerfume testersIdeas worth checkingDeo sprayMedicine storageSyringesIdeas to check last1 year 1.5 years2 yearsANALYTICAL PARTIDEAS GENERATION PARTCompleting a listof market demandsand trendsIdentifying subsystemsresponsible for each demand,parameters, and relativevaluesInverting relative valuesof each parameter andextracting newcontradictions anddemandsSelecting a subsystemwhich has a higherpriority to improvebased on gatheredinformationApplying evolutionary plottingand TRIZ trends of systemsEvolution to generate newideas to resolve identifiedcontradictionsRanking andLandscapingobtained ideasFigure 1: A general process of Value-Conflict MappingTo start VCM, we should first select a system which we are going to analyze. It can be a technicalobject, or a “soft” service, or a business organization. In other words, it can be any man-madesystem.There are nine basic steps in the analytical part of the process:1) Gathering information on market demands and market trends. Often such information isreadily available after thorough customer and market research independently of TRIZ andother innovation activities. Usually the list includes both functional and non-functionalrequirements and demands.2) Each market demand or a trend is linked to a certain part (subsystem) of a system underconsideration which is responsible for meeting that particular demand. Often, generaldemands can be divided to more specific demands. If there are several subsystemsconnected with the same demand, all of them are included to the analysis. In some cases,the entire system can be related to a particular demand (for instance, the overall weight ofa system), although in this case it is recommended to extract most contributingsubsystems.3) A parameter (property, feature, attribute) which is responsible for fulfilling a selecteddemand is identified. It can be weight, size, transparency, amount of information, numberof sales people, amount of transactions, and so forth. It should not necessarily be aphysical parameter, especially when we work with business or organizational systems.4) A relative value of a parameter is identified: here with a “relative value” we mean a desiredqualitative measure of the parameter with respect to fulfilling a corresponding demand. Forinstance, the weight can be high or low, a number of employees can be small or large, andso on. At this stage we do not pay attention to any specific numeric values, only to theirqualitative states.5) After each parameter has been identified with its relative value, its index of satisfaction isestimated. There are three possible values: “satisfactory”, “non-satisfactory”, and“satisfactory but can be improved”. The latter is used to indicate that there is a potentialfor improvement and this parameter should not be neglected.6) A relative value of each parameter is inverted to explore if we can discover missed or newmarket or business demands which can be added to the table.7) If a desired relative value contradicts a certain business demand, this business demand isadded to the column of business demands.8) All contradictions in the resulting VCM table are grouped and graphically represented as aVCM tree.9) Based on the analysis of VCM tree and priorities of market demands, the contradictions areranked and those subsystems are selected which have the highest importance to bechanged.4

#MARKET DEMANDSUBSYSTEMPROPERTYVALUEISShort walking timeShopping spaceAreaSmall-Broad selection of goodsGoodsDiversityLarge+Goods must be freshGoodsExpiration timeLong0All goods are to have nutritional infoPackagesInformationMuch-Quick advice from the personnelPersonnelNumberHigh-High quality of advicePersonnelCompetenceHigh-Fun shoppingEntertainment areaSizeLarge-Kids entertainmentEntertaining personnelNumberHigh-No waiting in linesPersonnelNumberHigh+Attractive pricingGoodsPriceHigh-Always availableGoodsNumberHigh+Clear visualization “what where”SignsSizeLarge-Broad selection of discounted goodsGoodsPriceLow-No crowdsShopping spaceAreaLarge+……………Theoutput of the Analytical Part of VCM is a set of ranked trees of contradictions related to system’sparts. These contradictions, in turn, can be further resolved with relevant TRIZ techniques. Incase when a system’s part experiences the largest number of contradictions, it is usually selectedas a primary candidate for improvement. The required improvement is reached by increasing theoverall degree of ideality of the system’s part with the TRIZ trends of technology or businessevolution.An example of completing the first 5 steps of the VCM process is shown in Table 2. Only afragment of the actual table is shown to simplify presentation. A case was to explore how asupermarket’s product department could be improved.As we can see, the table already gives us information about several contradictions: for instance,the area of a shopping space should be large to avoid overcrowding, and at the same time thearea should be small to reduce walking distance, and as a consequence, shopping time. Next, thistable should be added with new contradictions and new demands.4 INVERSION IN VCMTable 2: Completing the first 5 steps of VCMValue inversion plays important role in the VCM philosophy to discover new opportunities. Weoften take things for granted and do not think about “what if….”. It is one of numerous effects ofour psychological inertia: we used to accept things which surround us as they are; and we rarelythink about what would happen if we consider the same things within the opposite context. Forinstance, we used to think that roads must be as wide as possible to accommodate more traffic.But what would happen if the roads would become extremely narrow? In such case we will obtainmany positive effects: less noise, no large damage to the existing infrastructure, less building andmaintenance costs, and so forth. But narrow roads will demand a complete rethinking of a conceptof transportation. Still, making such statement explicit is important: inversion will force us toregister contradictions and eventually come up with new breakthrough ideas to resolve eithersmall-scale or long-standing contradictions.The process of inversion is performed in the following way. A string in a VCM table looks as follows(Index of Satisfaction is omitted):Demand -> Subsystem -> Parameter -> Relative ValueNow we should replace the relative value with its “opposite” relative value and reconstruct thechain backwards:Opposite Relative Value -> Parameter -> Subsystem –> New Demand5

This new demand can be a market demand or a business demand. Let us consider the followingexample with a bicycle. A wheel should have a large diameter to provide easy riding. Thus thestring should look as:Easy Riding -> Wheel -> Diameter -> LargeNow we should invert the relative value “large” to the relative value “small” and ask the question:“will there be any positive effects for a customer or business of a bicycle manufacturer?” Certainly,yes: the bicycle will become smaller and less bulky, thus the customers will be able to carry it withless efforts. A small bicycle means lower material and delivery costs for the bicycle manufactureras well. Thus we can add the following lines:Easy Riding -> Wheel -> Diameter -> LargeEasy Carrying -> Wheel -> Diameter -> SmallEasy Transportation -> Wheel -> Diameter -> SmallEasy Maintenance -> Wheel -> Diameter -> Small#MARKET DEMANDSUBSYSTEMPROPERTYVALUEBUSINESS DEMANDC1Short walking timeShopping spaceAreaSmallC1No crowdsShopping spaceAreaLargeC1Shopping spaceAreaSmallLow Rental costsC1Broad selection of goodsShopping spaceAreaLargeC2Products freshnessGoodsExpiration timeShortC2GoodsExpiration timeLongAvoid product lossC2GoodsExpiration timeLongLow-cost storageC3Quick advice from the personnelPersonnelNumberHighC3PersonnelNumberLowCost savingC4High quality of advicePersonnelCompetenceHighC4PersonnelCompetenceLowCost savingC5Fun shoppingEntertainment areaSizeLargeC5Entertainment areaSizeSmallRental costsC6Entertaining personnelNumberHighC6Entertaining personnelNumberLowCost savingC7No waiting in linesCashiersNumberHighC7CashiersNumberLowCost savingC8Always availableGoodsNumberHighC8GoodsNumberLowNo product lossC9GoodsPriceHighHigher marginC9Attractive pricesGoodsPriceLowC9Broad selection of discounted goodsGoodsPriceLowTable 3: Adding new customer and business demands to VCM (Supermarket case)6

#MARKET DEMANDSUBSYSTEMPROPERTYVALUEBUSINESS DEMANDC1Smooth runningTireElasticityHighC1TireElasticityHighHigher revenuesC1Longer lifetimeTireElasticityLowC1No need to replaceTireElasticityLowC2No sail effectWheelHollownessHighC2Higher stiffnessWheelHollownessLowC2WheelHollownessLowCheaper to manufactureC3Easy to carryWheelDiameterSmallC3Easy to cycleWheelDiameterLargeC3WheelDiameterLargeEasier transportationC3Easy maintenanceWheelDiameterLarge………………C54Better visibility in the darkLampLight IntensityHighC54LampLight intensityHighBetter revenuesC54Less blindingLampLight intensityLowC54Less energy spentLampLight intensityLowTable 4: Adding new customer and business demands to VCM (Bicycle case)Asone can see, we can add new demands after inversion which makes a picture of contradictionsmore complete.Apart from helping to identify other market and business demands, inversion helps to make manycontradictions explicit which block further evolution of the same subsystem. It is important sincein many cases the same subsystem might cause numerous contradictions and thus we shouldhave as most complete picture of involved contradictions as possible to define the right prioritiesand areas where to concentrate most of our future innovative efforts.The resulting fragments of the VCM tables for the supermarket and bicycle cases are shown inTables 3 and 4 respectively.For instance, by inverting the relative value for “a number of personnel is high” (Table 3) to “low”would provide us with considerably lower labour costs which was added as a business demand.Similarly, a new market demand was added to the table illustrating the bicycle case (Table 4): byinverting the relative value of light intensity we added a new demand: low intensity of the lightwill help to avoid blinding of other riders. In the actual table on the bicycle case, more than 50new market demands were added.5 VCM TREESTo provide a better visualization of results, so-called “VCM trees” are built after completion of theVCM process. Fragments of such trees are show in Figures 2 and 3. As we can see, on top of eachtree we place subsystems which were included to the corresponding VCM tables.The VCM trees can be useful to visually present the results of the VCM to a larger group of people,whose input might directly lead to new insights.Often the question arises, “Why can not we start doing VCM directly with building the VCM trees?”A goal of VCM is to systematically map market demands to relative values of system propertiesand not vice versa. A process will be more systematic and results will be more complete andconsistent after we first complete the VCM tables and then visualize them in form of the VCMtrees.7

Short walking timeShopping spaceAreasmalllargeNo crowdsLow rental costsBroad selection of goodsPersonnelNumberCompetencesmalllargehighlowQuick adviceHigh quality of adviceCosts savingCosts savingNumberhighlowAlways availableLow rental costsReduced purchase risksGoodsPricehighlowAttractive pricesHigher marginFaster salesExp. timelongshortProduct freshnessNo product lossLow-cost storageCustomer/MarketBusinessFigure 2: A fragment of a VCM tree (Supermarket case)TireElasticityHighLowSmooth runningLonger lifetimeHigher revenuesNo need to replaceWheelHollownessHighLowLargeNo sail effectHigher stiffnessEasy to cycleCheaper to manufactureEasy to transportDiameterSmallEasy to maintainEasy to carryFrameWeighthighlowHigh strengthEasy to carrylow costshighEasy to rideBetter visibilityhigher revenuesLightBrightnesslowLess energyLess blindingCustomer/MarketBusinessFigure 3: A fragment of a VCM tree (Bicycle case)8

6 WORKING WITH VCM RESULTSAfter the VCM Analytical Part is complete, there might be several ways of working with its results.For instance, most important contradictions can be identified with the ranking procedure and thenresolved with classical TRIZ problem solving techniques, for instance, ARIZ.However, in many cases the same subsystem is related to a multitude of contradictions, andsolving one or another contradiction will only satisfy a part of demands, or it will generate newproblems depending on a particular solution. As follows from our experience, a more effectivestrategy will be to use the TRIZ Trends of Evolution by applying them to a subsystem whichcauses most of contradictions. This procedure is known and thus we omit is presentation in thispaper.After the ideas generation session is finished, ideas and concepts obtained are ranked andlandscaped to identify:• most promising candidates for a short-term implementation and• most promising candidates which would require more efforts for a long-term implementation.Since a completed VCM process provides sufficient information and a broad overview of currentand potential contradictions which can be used to formulate many different tasks, these resultscan be re-used in different projects.7 SUMMARYSummarizing, application of VCM provides the following:• Mapping market demands to contradictions caused by a current system.• A comprehensive overview of system parts (subsystems) causing contradictions.• Identification of new or “hidden” contradictions and demands via the procedure of relativevalue inversion.• Input for a multitude of projects on further system’s innovation.• Information for defining and structuring innovation strategy with respect to a selectedtechnological, business, or organizational system.VCM can be used in various contexts and for analysing various types of systems. For instance,VCM can be used to analyze technical systems and products without adding business demands: tocollect information about contradictions at the level of market and technical demands only. Extrainformation can be added to VCM easily: for instance, we can add a layer of functional demandscollected from either TRIZ-based functional models or based on the observations of processesperformed by customers which reveal missing or insufficient useful as well as negative functions.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSI would like to express my sincere thanks to Nikolai Khomenko for useful discussions which weretaken to account when developing VCM.CONTACTValeri SouchkovICG Training & ConsultingWillem-Alexanderstraat 67511 KH, Enschede, The NetherlandsE-mail: valeri@xtriz.comPhone: +31 (53) 4342884FAX: +31 (53) 20111749