TRIZ Future 2007 in Frankfurt: Short Report

The 7th Global Conference TRIZ Future 2007, organized jointly by ETRIA, European TRIZ Zentrum, Chamber of Commerce of Kassel and Technical University of Munich, was holding on November 6-8 in Frankfurt am Main. 140 participants arrived to the conference. The conference opened with two tutorials: on Technology Forecast by Dmitry Koucheriavy and Advanced TRIZ by Nikolai Khomenko (both Graduate School of Science and Technology in Strasbourg). The conference featured 4 keynote talks: by Lucienne Blessing (University of Luxembourg), Guillaume Vendroux (Alstom Transport, France), Vincent Bontemps (Commissariat à l'énergie Atomique, France), and Greg Yezerski (Institute of Professional Innovators, USA). 44 papers, selected for presentation, were divided to two sections: scientific and practitioner.

The conference produced very nice impression, thanks to the efforts of its organizers and the participants. Being a founding member of ETRIA, I am personally very happy that each edition
of the TRIZ Future conference gains more and more worldwide audience and recognition.
Although the quality of papers was varying, overall the majority of papers either provided the
participants with new valuable information or triggered some further thoughts. It was also
interesting to observe that TRIZ is getting accepted broader on a corporate scale: David W.
Conley (Intel, USA) informed audience that approximately 1.000 Intel specialists took basic
TRIZ training, Robert Adunka (Siemens, Germany) presented a corporate training program in
TRIZ which is currently under deployment at Siemens.

A surprise was prepared by the organizers just prior to the conference dinner: a one hour
show at which two artists demonstrated how to teach physics in a new way: by showing
physical effects “alive” in a very funny and enjoyable manner. I doubt I will ever forget any of
the effects presented!

The conference ended with 2-hour ETRIA members meeting, a summary of which will soon be
posted to the ETRIA website (http://www.etria.net/). One of the important notes was that in general, TRIZ is known today at the level of the 1980s despite its recent progress. Certain efforts should be undertaken to make the worldwide TRIZ community familiar with current trends in TRIZ and bring an overview of TRIZ advances.

Summarizing, the conference had a high degree of quality of integrity, was very energizing, and became an excellent place for networking and communication.

As usual, Ellen Domb, the editor of the Online TRIZ Journal, provided live blogging from the
conference. You can read more about each conference day:

• Day 1 Morning
• Day 1 Afternoon
• Day 2
• Day 3

The conference proceedings are available in electronic form for ETRIA members for free at
http://www.etria.net/ in the membership section. A published version is available at Amazon.de

Photos from the conference: http://etria.net/img/TFC2007/