The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving of G.S. Altshuller as a Response to the Problems of Soviet Scientific and Technological Policy during the Late Soviet Period

Abstract. The article contains a study of the conditions of the emergence and development of the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ). TRIZ was popular among Soviet engineers. It was a noticeable intellectual phenomenon. The culture of technical workers and the intellectual trends among them haven’t been studied a lot. The case of TRIZ might be interesting for the development of this topic. Both the history of the origin and development of TRIZ and the problems that TRIZ faces in the 21st century are considered. Various sources of 1956–2022 are analyzed, including both materials on TRIZ (printed, digital, video, etc.), as well as books that are not related to it: conference proceedings, brochures, magazines that reflect the discourse of scientific and technical USSR policy. The main assumption of the article is that TRIZ is formulated as a response to the explicitly set goals of the scientific and technological policy of the USSR in the 1950s–1960s, which becomes an obstacle to the successful worldwide popularization of TRIZ after the 1990s. The article discusses the changes that were made in order to integrate TRIZ into an alien economic environment. In particular, the philosophical component of TRIZ and the existential answers that it offered to engineers remain relevant only within the picture of the world given by a specific socioeconomic situation. Other conditions set a different picture of the world, in which the philosophical part of TRIZ must be discarded — as a result, it loses its main feature and cannot compete in the market with similar theories.

Keywords: TRIZ, theory of inventive problem solving, USSR, science and technology policy, invention, scientific and technical workers.