Ibukun Phillips, an MSIE student affiliated with the Purdue Systems Collaboratory, presented his current research on business model innovation to the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE)’s International Workshop in Los Angeles on January 26.

Phillips' 30-minute presentation described his research results on "An SSM-TRIZ Methodology for Business Problem Structuring". It focuses on combining the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) and the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) to establish an SSM-TRIZ methodology for resolving 'soft' business problems with conflicting interests.

After his presentation, participants spent an hour in scholarly discussions regarding his groundbreaking methodological approach that joins distinct philosophical approaches to problem-solving that separately developed during the Cold War era in Western Europe and the Soviet Union.

This is the first time the two methodologies have been extended in this innovative way. "The most notable of problem structuring methods in systems thinking is the Soft Systems Methodology," Phillips explained. "However, it doesn't address soft problems with conflicting perspectives and elements, which is the gap in technical and business applications that his innovative SSM-TRIZ methodology has filled. My methodology applies a systemic epistemology in tackling this."

His advisor, Dr. C Robert Kenley, associate professor of engineering practice in industrial engineering, is delighted at the reception of Phillips' work by the premiere international society on systems engineering. “I advised Ibukun to take a class on TRIZ one semester and by the end of the semester, he astounded me with his innovative concept to put TRIZ and SSM together into a single process," said Kenley. "Not only did he conceive of the possibility of combining the two, he also applied it to a real-world business situation that previously was deadlocked over competing interests."

ABSTRACT

Peter Checkland (University of Lancaster Systems Department, U.K.) developed Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) to tackle problem situations from a systems perspective. However, SSM needs to be extended with other methods to find superior solutions that overcome the need for a compromise or trade-off between conflicting or contradictory elements. The tutorial extended Checkland’s SSM approach to resolve problems with conflicting or contradictory elements. It integrates the powerful benefits of TRIZ-based analysis into SSM and provides a means for systemic resolution of business problems with conflicting sub-system elements. The session acknowledged that soft problems can have conflicting relationship among their elements, compared the strengths and weaknesses of SSM and TRIZ in problem structuring, and presented a collaborative SSM-TRIZ approach for problem structuring. Finally, this tutorial applied the joint methodology to examine the business problem of restructuring the operations of a University Canteen.