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10TRIZ IN TECHNOLOGY AND IT SECTION, OCTOBER 14, 2022
DOI: 10.24412/cl-37100-2023-12-129-137
Jason Wang
Innovation Education in Practice at Tsinghua University
ABSTRACT
China has become the world's second largest economy after decades of development and is undergoing a fundamental transformation from a resource-driven country to an innovation-driven country. Tsinghua University (THU) is one of China's top comprehensive research universities, with a mission to train world-class scientists and outstanding engineers. Since 2017, the founding team of IMA-Innocloud has been invited to offer the first systematic innovation course at Tsinghua, and has so far offered several innovation-related courses for postgraduate and doctoral students from various faculties, which are open to postgraduate students across the university and have been widely praised by students and faculty members.
This article describes the differentiated educational needs of individual faculties as well as big challenges we have to face in digitalization era, esp. during the hard time of pandemic. The architecture of innovation education courses is introduced, including the Innovation Technology course and the Innovation Psychology course; it describes the basic framework and content of the courses and the modular combinations adapted to different teaching purposes. SolvingMill and TRIZTrainer SaaS software and the fusion of on-line and off-line teaching method are introduced. The article concludes by showing examples of students' innovation training and looking at the way forward for innovation education in China.
Key Words: innovation education, TRIZ-based systematic innovation, innovation technology, innovation psychology, innovation digitalization.
NATIONAL INNOVATION POLICY OF CHINA AND STATUS OF INNOVATION EDUCATION
On Sep 20, 2021, WIPO released the Global Innovation Index 2021[1]. China broke into the top 20, ranking the 12th among 126 economies around the world, and China is the only middle-income economy among the top 20 on the ranking list. Furthermore, improvements over the previous year can be seen in terms of innovation environment, innovation input & output and innovation efficiency. China even stands on the top 1 position in the world in areas such as R&D expenditures and the number of researchers, patents, and publications. However, these innovations are mostly improvement-based or incremental innovations, relatively few invention-based innovations. In order to further enhance global competence China launched many national policies these years aiming to transform its economic growth mode from resource and energy driven to innovation driven mode.
Feature 1: Global Innovation Index 2021
Tsinghua University (THU), founded in 1911, is the top 1 university in China, esp. in engineering and technology areas. THU is the most demanding university in China, attracting the most brilliant students around the country each year, offering the most excellent teachers and first-class courses. THU also offers best innovation and entrepreneurship education and becomes the best demonstration effect.
Tsinghua has dozens of courses related to innovation. They can be divided into three categories: business and innovation management, professional development methods and design thinking. After a brief study we can find some deficiencies of the existing course: too many theories with little applications; too many tools with few processes, too much popular science with little specialized expertise, and too many teachers with few experts. Hence we proposed a new innovation course framework with some recommendations. At least three combinations were presented: innovation tools + entrepreneurial skills, technical method + business planning, and technological competitiveness + market development.
SYSTEM FRAMEWORK AND CONTENTS OF INNOVATION EDUCATION COURSES
Since 2017, the founding team of IMA-innocloud company has been invited to develop innovation education courses based on above ideas. The target was postgraduate students of several selected departments at beginning, and then opened to all master students from all faculties of THU. Hereafter are several examples:
• An Introduction to Basic Innovation Concepts and World-wide Innovation Theories and Methods, general studies literacy program for all postgraduate students of whole faculties.
• Creative Psychology and Creative Thinking, general studies literacy program for all postgraduate students of whole faculties.
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Energy Internet, Electrical Engineering Department, also open to the whole faculties.
• System Innovation Technology and Entrepreneurial Practice, Electronics Department, also open to the whole faculties.
• Theory and Practice of Inter-disciplinary Engineering Technology Innovation, innovative leading engineering doctoral program, open to all engineering doctorial students of whole faculties.
These courses are designed to acquaint students with innovative thinking and innovation technology before they select interdisciplinary R&D works. Meanwhile, by taking the courses, students will have a deeper understanding and preliminary experience of entrepreneurship before they
actually start their own businesses. All these courses can be supported by three fundamental sections: innovation technology, innovative thinking and business thinking. 1. Teaching style of innovation technology section
This includes some aspects: theory explanation, case study, problem discussion, group work, and demo presentation. In cooperation with our strategic partner, famous Triz master Nikolay Shpakovsky, we introduce AIPS process of OTSM theory and revolution tree methodology in classes with different depth according to the purpose of education and level of students.
Figure 2: AIPS Process of OTSM Theory [2]
To better understand the overall framework of business and the relationship between technology innovation and commercial value creation, a small part of technical transfer and entrepreneur-ship is arranged at the end of the course. Two core concepts are enlightened: core competence and business plan. Figure3 shows a basic framework for business excellence.
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Figure 3: Building a Framework for Business Excellence [3]
The overall structure of the innovation technology course contains the following four modules with several sessions in each:
• Systems analysis and its development forecast Session 1: Technical systems and functional analysis Session 2: Functional models and tailoring of technical system Session 3: Finding solution
Session 4: Evolutionary routes and applications of technical systems
• From problem situations to hypothesis formulation Session 5: Problem situation analysis
Session 6: Causes of conflict and hypotheses Session 7: Methods of hypothesis formulation
• Identifying and solving conflicting problems Session 8: Ideal solutions and the AIPS algorithm Session 9: From hypothesis to problem model
Session 10: Technical contradictions and the invention principle Session 11: Physical contradictions and the separation principle
• Entrepreneurial practice and core competencies Session 12: Entrepreneurial practice_5W1H Session 13: Business models and core competencies
2. Creative psychology and innovative thinking section
This section contains three basic modules: theoretical knowledge of creativity, developing the ability to think creatively and theories of personal creative development. We developed the so-called psychodynamic model of innovation (Figure 4) to illustrate the multi-level relationships between innovative activities, innovation methodologies and all kinds of emotion status and mind conditions. Through this course, students will learn that in different stage of entire innovation activity, different mind condition as well as emotion status are needed. A leader of innovation team shall have the ability to identify and adjust the overall status of the team to ensure higher innovation efficiency.
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Figure 4: Psychodynamic model of innovation [4]
This course also has four modules with several sessions listed as below:
• Introduction: The innovation capability and creativity model Session 1: Innovation and the ability to innovate
Session 2: Becoming a pioneering talent
• Thinking and methods in the innovation process Session 3: The science and technology innovation Process Session 4: Thinking and methods for defining problem Session 5: Thinking and methods for generating idea Session 6: Dialectical thinking and imagination Session 7: Exploring innovative thinking pattern
• Mental processes in the innovation process
Session 8: Emotion and will in the creative process
Session 9: Motivation and values
Session 10: Personality traits of creative people
• The path to becoming a creative person
Session 11/12: The path to becoming a creative person
3. Innovation Life-cycle Management (ILM)
A very impressive innovation training camp are periodically implemented at X-lab platform of THU. X-lab is the leading platform in China university ecosystem for spurring student innovation and entrepreneurships. Till now, thousands of student teams have ever been involved, they come from quite different departments and faculties, starting their journey here from ideation to innovation and to commercialization. Many startups have been spin-off from the platform. We developed a model called innovation life-cycle management trying to cover the full process from customer needs to product concept, then technical innovation, technical prototyping, commercialization, and technical transfer. Such a life-cycle model features the setting of standalone stage of innovation between ideation and R&D stages, and the close loop process of value creation which starts from market and comes back to market. Technical innovation will only be verified through fulfillment of market needs.
Figure 5: Innovation Life-cycle Management (ILM) Model [5]
Innovation life-cycle management training camp targets innovation teams from all fields. Students will be asked to select independent topic through field trip and demand exploration. Collective discussions are organized to determine tasks. No formal classroom teaching session, teacher or mentor only make proper guidance: explaining, guiding, and summarizing.
4. Course effects
Different from other professional courses, the innovation and entrepreneurship courses we offer teaches "transversal knowledge", i.e., the knowledge of how to apply professional knowledge from all domains. By taking these courses, students will have a broad vision and an open mind, thus getting mentally and methodologically prepared for future innovation. Students will also master the methods and techniques of applying the knowledge they have learned, which is essential to entre-preneurship.
Figure 6 is just an example collected from a master student of electronic engineering dept. He tried to use innovation method to build a flexible electronic circuit for wearable electronic device, instead of hard PCB board.
Figure 6: Case study: Flexible Circuit for Wearable Electronic Device
ONLINE DIGITAL INNOVATION EDUCATION TOOLS
Nowadays almost every aspect of the society is fully digitalized. Online tools are widely accepted in our life, including shopping, communication, collaboration and much more. Online education tool and SaaS version innovation software for training purpose or real-world problem solving were developed years ago, which are quite helpful to innovation education esp. during the serious pandemic times in the passing three years.
Figure7 shows a kind of online education tool "Raining Classroom" widely used in THU campus. It is well integrated with Powerpoint software, launched by online meeting system, and has powerful functions for online interaction, quiz and polls.
Figure 7: Online Education Tool "Raining Classroom"
Figure8 and 9 are two SaaS software: SolvingMill for real-world problem solving, and TRIZ-Trainer for innovation training purpose. These two products were initially developed by the expert team in Minsk led by Nikolay Shpakovsky, and fine-tuned by joint work with IMA-Innocloud recently.
SolvingMill perfectly implements the whole process of AIPS and supports team working. Innovator or user starts the journey with scenario description and then step forward along a structured and systematic route towards final solutions. It is a little complex and stricter than some other light weight innovation tools, but is very helpful for new innovators to taste and then solid a set of highly efficient process.
Figure 8: SolvingMill innovation software
TRIZTrainer SaaS software is dedicated to education and training purpose only. The internal process is the same as SolvingMill, with rich guidelines and helps at each step. It contains dozens of pre-designed innovation problems with different difficulty levels. A registered student will see several problems and try to solve it step by step in software. Each interaction with software will be recorded automatically, so that it is possible to draw the digital profile of innovation behavior of a specific student. Throughout the past years, we have accumulated innovation behavior data of hundreds of students. Considering these students are the most brilliant geniuses of China, we believe the data collected are of great value to understand the mindset mode of Chinese young generation when they do innovation.
Figure 9: TRIZTrainer Innovation training software
HOW TO USE TRIZ TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF INNOVATION TEACHING
1. Challenge
The diagram in Figure2 shows the innovative algorithm we taught at Tsinghua University. There are many algorithm steps and many tools involved. It takes a lot of class time to explain and train. But class time is limited, so how can we ensure effective teaching?
2. Existing measures and the conflicts arising
Currently, it is standard practice to enhance students' understanding of innovative concepts and tools through homework. For example, we use TRIZTrainer to effectively train students' innovative skills. This approach solves some of the problems, but there are still some shortcomings. Two technical conflicts are arising:
Technical conflict 1:
Students use after-class time to do practice problems, and the teacher makes a short summary in class, which can save class time, but cannot give targeted guidance to each student.
Technical conflict 2:
In order to ensure that students truly master innovative methods, it is necessary to evaluate the results of each student's practice individually and point out their problems, but this will seriously affect the progress of classroom teaching.
In conclusion, we get a pair of technical conflict: quality of teaching vs. classroom time.
3. Final ideal result with physical contradictions
Final ideal result 1:
Ensuring quality teaching and learning within limited classroom time and using available system resources.
Physical conflicts :
The need to take class time to tutor students in order to enhance the quality of teaching and learning, but to compromise the progress.
Cannot take class time to tutor students in order to ensure course progression, but would reduce the quality.
Final ideal result 2:
The need to find the X-element, which ensures that the teacher provides personalized tutoring for each student without taking time away from the class and delaying progress.
4. Resource analysis
Physical resources: teachers, students, course materials, TRIZTrainer software
Field resources: Internet
Time resources: time in class, time after class
Spatial resources: classroom, space for students and teacher after class activities
5. Initial solution
Use spatial separation to resolve temporal contradictions. That is, targeted tutoring in the space where students and teachers are active after school. But how do they communicate when they are not in the same space? This could be solved by using existing communication tools. But this adds a new system that is not ideal.
6. Final solution
Based on the results of the resource analysis, teacher-student communication can be implemented using the existing TRIZTrainer software. It is decided to add instructor-student communication features to TRIZTrainer. Specifically:
1) Adding an evaluation function for each step of the answer.
2) Adding a non-realtime teacher-student communication function.
Figure 10: An example problem in TRIZTrainer with communication features
7. Implementation results After five semesters of use since 2020, It can be said that the conflict between teaching time and teaching quality has been completely eliminated. Figure11 shows status of innovation behavior performance for students of different categories, we can see that , after instruction and classroom practice, for top class A students (15%), correct thinking patterns can be quickly established without additional tutoring; For class B students(50%) they have the ability to adapt quickly to new modes of thinking through teaching, classroom practice and some tutorials; while for class C students(35%), there are some change in thinking after teaching, classroom practice and coaching, but more training is needed afterwards.
Figure 11: Innovation behavior performance for students [6]
CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, best practices in innovation education in Tsinghua University are introduced. The architecture of innovation education courses is introduced, including the Innovation Technology course and the Innovation Psychology course; it describes the basic framework and content of the courses and the modular combinations adapted to different teaching purposes. SolvingMill and TRIZTrainer SaaS software and the fusion of on-line and off-line teaching method are introduced. Digitalization of innovation behavior and data driven analysis are firstly mentioned, which show great potential in future research of innovation education and training. Finally, TRIZ tool is used to improve the quality of innovation education.
REFERENCES
1. Global Innovation Index 2021, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
2. OTSM-TRIZ: approaches and practice of application, N.A. Shpakovsky, M.: INFRA-M, 2019 ISBN 978-5-16-013105-4
3. Company Analysis, Per Jenster and David Hussey, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright 2002
4. Textbook of Creative Psychology and Innovative Thinking, Oleg Li and Jason Wang, 2022
5. Textbook of Innovation Life-cycle Management, Jason Wang, 2020
6. Course Report of Systematic Innovation and Entrepreneurship 2021, Oleg Li and Jason Wang
