End of last year I read this book on the TRIZ methodology, in English “theory of creative problem solving” originally developed by Genrich Saulowitch Altschuller in the former soviet union. Quite some time already I wanted to read about TRIZ, as I’m fascinated by the idea that you could systematically find and direct innovation. The book is also a nice introduction to innovation management by the way. Of course the method comes more from mechanical engineering and unfortunately does not translate directly to my space of computer science. That remains the open question for me, is it possible to find and document similar patterns in software engineering as TRIZ does it? Or do we maybe have something like this with architecture and design patterns more or less? It was an interesting read nevertheless and gets you thinking about how to systematically find new ideas and solutions for problems. And of course it is a nice piece of off-the-path thinking from Russia!