Abstract

The theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) was developed by Gingrich Altshuller, a Soviet inventor and science fiction writer. TRIZ is a problem-solving, analysis, and forecasting tool derived from the study of patterns of invention in the global patent literature.This case study is an illustrative example of the implementation of theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ). The project derived from a two-day workshop held by Sunil Kaushik at the University of Piraeus during the 2017 Quality Days conference in Athens, Greece. Participants of diverse backgrounds and different ages worked together to verify if the TRIZ approach can be applicable on business strategies. The team’s project was to create a social media marketing strategy for electric folding bicycles, with the goal of generating 100,000 social media followers. After defining the target, the team analyzed their system through a combination of the nine windows tool and TRIZ’s basic principles. This provided the team a detailed picture of the project and thus, following different standardized steps, to come up with several different innovative ideas for the social media strategy.