Attribute-Domain Matrix: A Reverse Engineering Method for Innovation

Abstract

An innovative idea is a beautiful thing, but most innovative ideas do not become successful new products. For products that are successful, there is a variety of examples over more than 150 years of situations where customers used them in ways never planned by the designer. Only few companies are systematically exploiting non-conventional use as a method to generate ideas for new product outcomes and problem solutions. TRIZ awareness of analogies systemizes the search for available alternate situations: the attribute-domain matrix offensively transfers product attributes to unexpected application domains, breaks the functional fixedness pattern and helps see the resources that are available in any product or system.