TRIZ and the paradigms of social sustainability in product development endeavors

Abstract

The Business practices of an industrialized civilization are responsible for intensifying the dynamics of the interdependent environmental, social and economic domains of our ecosystem. The worldwide objective to accomplish Sustainability is invariably addressed by Policy makers and Institutions by means of moderately disparate co-relations between Environmental and Social considerations. The dimension of Social Sustainability has a direct co-relation towards the extended continuation of a globalized Enterprise. The stated co-relation is an interconnected and interdependent network comprising of growth in Innovation and Sustainability at the Environmental and Economic frontiers. From the standpoint of Innovation, the 20th century has been dominated by both TRIZ with OTSM and Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns to steer the future of revolutionary innovations. Moreover, TRIZ and its evolved counterpart OTSM have been extensively utilized for macroscale problem solving scenarios, while Kurzweil’s Law has reached up to quantum scale whereby matter as we know exhibits an entire range of unique properties with a potential to dramatically transform our human civilization. Accordingly, the perceived limitations and vague applicability of TRIZ in sub-macro scale innovations has been discussed. The contemporary tools for project evaluation (e.g.: cost benefit analysis) and product development (e.g.: linear stage-gate process) quintessential for commercializing innovations are identified to be limited, both in scope and accuracy for delivering a long term ‘sustainable’ competitive advantage to an Enterprise. Consequently, the proposed conceptual Multifaceted Framework addresses the issue of social sustainability in Product Development. The underpinnings of Systems Thinking, TRIZ and OTSM, Complex Adaptive Systems, Socio-Economics & Human Behavior forms the fundamental basis of the proposed Multifaceted Framework. The novel perspective offered by the proposed Framework enables product development teams to overcome the inherent myopia and other limitations associated with the contemporary Environmental Life Cycle Analysis and Sustainability related Decision Models. An Expert opinion based evaluation technique in conjugation with a Multilayered Decision Modeling Method have been incorporated as a salient features in the proposed framework. The evaluation technique is utilized for assigning numerical values to the pertinent sustainability related criteria of the Multilayered Decision Model. The proposed Framework plays a crucial role in product development and decision modeling across the Idea Screening Phase (Stage 2) up to the Feasibility Analysis Phase (Stage 4). In addition, a modified version Taguchi Loss Function is included to exemplify a tangible relation between Product Quality parameters and Sustainability. The objective of the proposed framework is to provide an efficient, yet comprehensive evaluation as well as an effective product development strategy with a distinct and a holistic outlook on Social Sustainability.