From TRIZ to OTSM-TRIZ: addressing complexity challenges in inventive design

Nowadays, the need to rebuild design practices in enterprises is strongly felt both in terms of human skills and methodological expertise. An emerging statement is that tools and methods developed during the quality and optimisation era have shown their limits and become inappropriate in the context of the needs of the innovation era. The aim of this paper is first to state that a partial answer to face the innovation era's difficulties has been brought about by the theory of inventive problem solving. Further, we will state the incapacity of TRIZ to face complex situations and, as a result, an extension of it has been proposed by OTSM-TRIZ theory. A case study conducted in collaboration with Thales regarding a ground-based radar design will be used here to illustrate how several of our assumptions, more precisely linked with a Contradiction Network, may be validated through the observation of practical results.