Creativity Principle
Updated 2026-08-16
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
A body of heuristics derived by TRIZ and related methods from the study of large patent collections. The best known are the forty inventive principles, including segmentation, extraction, local quality, asymmetry, and merging, which describe structural moves that repeatedly resolve technical contradictions. The key qualification is that the principles are abstract: they indicate where to look rather than supplying the solution, and they must be combined with domain knowledge. Their value is that they turn invention from a random search into a guided one.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Problem abstraction: restate the problem as a contradiction or function before consulting the principles. - Principle matching: select two or three principles that fit the contradiction and apply each in turn. - Option combination: merge the resulting candidates with domain constraints to reach a concrete design.
Anchor fast decisions
Inventors working in isolation tend to reuse a narrow set of moves they already know. Patent analysis shows that successful solutions repeatedly employ a much wider repertoire of structural transformations across unrelated industries. Making that repertoire explicit lets a solver traverse it deliberately, so the search covers promising regions instead of circling the obvious. Cross-domain patterns transfer because the underlying contradictions are structurally similar.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZverified
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