An Old Theory Powering Bold New Solutions
Here’s the third article in my innovation series for free and paid subscribers. Read the first two parts here and here.
Would you like to charge your EV in under five minutes? Get a hot pizza in less than 15? Or use the priciest raw materials and still cut production costs? It’s more possible than it seems.
“The ideal device is no device at all, yet the function is performed.” Genrikh Altshuller, a Soviet inventor, coined this principle back in the 1940s. It’s powered breakthrough innovations in hundreds of companies since.
Altshuller studied thousands of inventions and saw repeating patterns. He turned them into universal principles and developed TRIZ — short for Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. He kept refining it until he died in 1998.
Many businesses use TRIZ to unlock innovation. You can, too — and in this article, I’ll share some of Altshuller’s ideas with you.
The magic of ultra-fast delivery
In April 2020, I was trapped in the country where I worked because I missed the last flight home. I was afraid of going outside, so I ordered things online. A company advertised 15-minute grocery delivery. I thought it was just a marketing stunt, but I placed an order, which was delivered in… 11 minutes.
The city was huge. The delivery companies’ distribution centers were on the outskirts. Traffic froze during the lockdown, but it was still impossible to drive 15-20 kilometers (9-12 miles) in just 11 minutes. And the company needed some time to pick and pack the order. Did they deliver my order by a fighter jet?
I had all the time in the world, so I started reading about the company. What I read made me think – what a brilliant example of using TRIZ!
“The ideal device is no device at all”
In business, the biggest gains sometimes come from cutting, not adding.
Imagine you run a café in an office complex. It’s always packed during lunchtime, and you see long lines and angry faces. You hear them grumbling, ‘Next time, I’ll go to another café.’
You want to shorten the lines. You can hire more staff or buy new equipment, but Altshuller would do it differently – he’d ask four questions:
1. What is our inventive challenge? What task are we trying to solve?
We want to reduce the wait time without losing customers.
2. What’s a Contradiction?
A contradiction clearly defines the problem at hand. It looks like this in our case: ‘Order fulfillment takes time, yet patrons don’t want to wait.’
3. What’s an Acute Contradiction?
An acute contradiction is a contradiction pushed to the extreme — where the incompatibility between two requirements becomes stark.
For instance: ‘Order fulfillment takes time, yet patrons want to wait zero seconds.’
An Acute Contradiction is meant to seem unresolvable because it ignites our creativity. If there is an obvious solution, why bother?
4. What’s an IFR?
IFR stands for Ideal Final Result. It’s the solution where the contradiction is resolved without extra costs, resources, or complexity. If possible, the system resolves the problem on its own, or the problem disappears without intervention.
The goal is to get as close to IFR as possible.
In our example, we can define the IFR as: ‘Patrons’ wait time is zero seconds, but their meals are still prepared.’
I don’t know if Starbucks used TRIZ, but the order-ahead feature in their app looks like an elegant TRIZ-like solution to the problem. It isn’t perfect, but it’s much better than hiring more staff. It doesn’t cut preparation time, but it removes the feeling of waiting — which really counts.
A few more examples
Example #1
A company: A medium-sized company in Eastern Europe
An industry: Shipping and logistics
A problem: Clients feel entitled to near-24/7 updates on their cargo — the current status and estimated arrival time. Manually handling such requests sends costs through the roof.
The obvious-but-meh solution: The client dashboard on the company’s website.
What’s wrong with the obvious solution? It takes clients too long to log in to the dashboard, locate their shipment, and transfer the data to their ERP.
The contradiction: Clients want updates quickly and easily, but the dashboard doesn’t allow that.
The acute contradiction: Clients want zero-second, effortless updates, but using the dashboard involves multiple steps and can’t be simplified.
The IFR: Clients do nothing – the updates just arrive.
The real solution: Direct integration of clients’ ERPs with the company’s ERP so that cargo data updates automatically. No clicks, no emails – feels like magic.
Instead of streamlining human effort, they removed it — giving customers what they wanted: effortless information.
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Example #2
A company: Nio (China)
An industry: Electric vehicle manufacturing
A problem: Customers are reluctant to buy EVs because it takes too long to charge them. No one likes to sit around for two hours at a charging station on a highway while their EV charges.
The obvious-but-meh solution: To increase the battery capacity so customers don’t need to charge them often.
What’s wrong with the obvious solution? It’s expensive and adds weight to the battery. The heavier the car, the more battery power it needs to move.
The contradiction: Customers want to charge their EVs quickly, but that’s not possible so far.
The acute contradiction: Customers want instant charging, but it still takes time.
The IFR: Customers spend no time, but their EVs are fully charged.
The real solution: Nio, an EV maker from China, has already established 3,200 battery swap stations in the country, including 964 along highways. You don’t need to charge the battery. You just swap it, like you used to with your Nokia phone two decades ago. As simple as that.
Nio didn’t speed up charging — they skipped the wait entirely by changing the game. So yes, charging your EV in under five minutes is possible.
Turbo-fast delivery in 2020
The company that delivered my order in just 11 minutes back in 2020 also found an elegant solution:
Challenge: Delivering groceries quickly during lockdown.
Contradiction: Delivery takes time, but customers want fast delivery.
Acute Contradiction: Customers want zero-minute delivery, but it takes some time.
IFR: Items appear at customer locations without travel time.
The solution: The company rented out small shops in residential areas — places that had gone out of business after losing the fight to big retail chains – and turned them into mini-warehouses. A courier delivered my order from the next block.
Instead of speeding up delivery, they removed the root problem — cutting distance. That’s how they made near-instant delivery possible in a big city.
We’ve updated our product lineup. See what’s new – you won’t want to miss it.
Other examples:
1. An insulation materials manufacturer took on a contradiction that seemed unsolvable: how to deliver high quality without driving up costs. Premium materials meant better quality — but also a painful jump in production costs.
That’s when the team remembered one of Altshuller’s TRIZ principles: Blessing in Disguise, or simply, “Turn lemons into lemonade.”
Yes, the high-grade materials were pricey — but they dramatically reduced defects and kept the lines running without interruptions. By focusing on nonstop production, the company pulled off what once looked impossible: top-tier quality at a surprisingly low cost.
2. A truck manufacturer faced high costs and frustrating dealers with a tedious parts return process. Applying IFR thinking, they realized it made no sense to verify low-value returns. So they dropped the checks for cheap parts — and instantly cut costs while making dealers happier.
3. Zume Pizza set out to revolutionize the pizza world by merging the courier and the kitchen. When you placed an order, a truck with a built-in pizzeria hit the road. The pizza was baked on the way.
The founder tried to solve a classic contradiction: people want pizza right now, but baking and delivery take time.
The idea has a certain elegance — and maybe, if the founder hadn’t been so eager to replace pizza makers with robots, the company wouldn’t have gone under.
Conclusion
In all the examples above, the obvious solutions would’ve been expensive, complex — and, most importantly, nowhere near the IFR. The TRIZ approach helps you dig into the contradiction, and the gap between the acute contradiction and the IFR is where your creative potential kicks in.
You can start by asking these four questions to create innovative products and business models. What seems like an unsolvable contradiction today might turn into a breakthrough idea for your business tomorrow. These four questions will help you see your product from a new angle.
Svyatoslav Biryulin
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