This year we have been observing an explosion of interest in innovation. It becomes very clear that innovation in modern economy is one of the key components of success. And it is not about innovation in technology only: acceleration of competition, globalization, instant retrieval of information on demand, virtual collaboration and other factors demand fast innovative solutions in all areas of our activities: business, management, organization, social environment, and so forth. We hope the coming year of 2006 will bring to all of us even better and more powerful tools and techniques which catalyze innovation and boost innovative thinking in both technological and business areas.
 

• January 18, 2006: TRIZ Day, Arnhem, The Netherlands. During this event, we introduce TRIZ to the audience, and this time we focus on presenting different case studies with TRIZ. One of the important goals of the event is to create environment for networking. Both beginner and expert users are invited. More details and registration are available at www.triz-event.com
• March 7, 2006: One-day introductory course: TRIZ for Technology, Enschede, The Netherlands. Learn more
• January 25, 2006: One day introductory course: TRIZ for Business and Management, Enschede, The Netherlands. Learn more
• April 29-May 3, 2006: TRIZCON 2006 by Altshuller Institute, Milwaukee, WI, USA. TRIZ annual congress in the United States. Learn more

The latest ETRIA conference TRIZ Future 2005 was again very successful. 120 participants from 23 countries arrived in November to Graz, Austria to share their experiences with TRIZ and to listen to 39 papers presented during the conference selected from 70 papers in total.

Many authors focused on practical aspects of TRIZ applications and demonstrated case studies explaining how TRIZ helped them and their organizations to come up with new ideas and solutions. The rest of the papers discussed new TRIZ developments and proposed further improvements of TRIZ educational process.

It was interesting to hear a developing story of Samsung Electronics by Kim Jung-Hyeon who mentioned that in 2004 TRIZ helped to obtain 100 new patents, and in 2005 TRIZ was successfully applied to more than 90 company's projects thus helping to generate and secure core intellectual property in key competitive areas. Not surprisingly that the role of TRIZ at Samsung is growing and recently "TRIZ was introduced to education course for thousands of new employees".

Today 80 certified TRIZ specialists are employed by Samsung while European companies certainly lag behind due to their slow rate of TRIZ acceptance and introduction.

One of the most important conclusions from the conference is that currently a major question is not "is TRIZ good or not?" any longer but how to introduce and use TRIZ properly to obtain maximum benefits. 

A short report on the conference written by Ellen Domb is available at:
http://www.triz-journal.com/archives/2005/12/12.pdf, and a more detailed report is available from Boris Axelrod: http://www.metodolog.ru/00581/00581.html

For ETRIA members, all papers presented at ETRIA conferences starting from 2001 are available in electronic form.

The next ETRIA conference is scheduled for Fall 2006, and it will be hosted by the University of Leuven in Belgium. The dates will be announced later at the website of ETRIA www.etria.net.

A new series of articles (in Dutch) written by V. Souchkov and J. Stevens was recently published by Dutch magazine Constructeur. Use these links to download the articles if you read Dutch:
 

	Systematisch innoveren met TRIZ Deel 1 (Constructeur 09-05)
	Systematisch innoveren met TRIZ Deel 2 (Constructeur 10-05)
	Systematisch innoveren met TRIZ Deel 3 (Constructeur 11-05)

• "Better mousetraps aren’t catching more mice", argue authors of the article "Money isn't Everything" in discussing what really influences return on innovation in modern industries, from Booz Allen Hamilton (thanks Jaap Beetstra for submitting!)
• A cover story "A Perpetual Crisis Machine" published at Sep. 6, 2005 in the Fortune magazine, issue 75, discusses which key factors drive innovation at Samsung, and TRIZ is also mentioned as one of the strategic tools to boost innovative performance of the company. Unfortunately, to read the full article subscription is required. If you do not have subscription, you can find a shortened version of the article at http://www.aitriz.org/ai/index.php?page=InsideTRIZ/insidetriz&article=1105

Using available resources to improve the degree of ideality of systems has always been one of the key concepts of TRIZ which guide towards better ideas and solutions. See a selection of stories about technological innovations which tell us that using the available resources to achieve our goals can be a winning strategy to create new solutions. Although these solutions were not created with TRIZ (at least, we are not aware of that) and we cannot guarantee their ultimate success but still they are good illustrations of the concept.

• Stay wireless: Recently launched project FON targets at providing the world with absolutely free wireless access to the Internet. How? By sharing resources of each computer which is already wirelessly connected to the net. This has been somewhat crucial to me recently when, for example, after landing in a very beautiful hotel I discovered that all what I had was modem access only... and of course, my new laptop was packed not with a modem but with absolutely greatest and latest wi-fi device which was totally useless. Read full story at http://en.fon.com/info/what-is-fon.php
• Self-energizing house: A self-sustaining house which does not consume energy from outside and only uses energy generated onsite: http://www.zokazola.com/prj_adams_zeroenergy.html
• Never freezing roads: Two weeks ago I stuck in the middle of nowhere for many hours because a highway looked more like a hockey arena rather than a road. Do we need a lot of energy to keep it free from ice? Find out how to use "summer heat to prevent roads from icing up in winter": http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7877
• Green Flagship: A new concept of a ship from Wallenius Wilhelmsen which uses energy available during sea ride: sun, wind, waves. http://www.2wglobal.com/expo2005/english/zeroEmissionCarrier/index.jsp
• Refrigerator without energy supply: Why not? Again, just use resources! Read about a "low-tech" solution from Nigeria which won the Rolex Award:
  http://www.rolexawards.com/laureates/laureate-6-bah_abba.html
• A "bottled" boat: Utilization of plastic bottles is a problem, so why not to consider them as a resource? Have a look at a boat built from the bottles: http://www.projetomegapet.com.br/ (in Portuguese only but you can still see the photo).
• "Inflatable" concrete: Air has always been a good resource but we rarely see it this way. Read a story about inflatable concrete buildings which can be finished within 12 hours: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66872,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2