Value Quotient

Understanding the Value Quotient technique enables the innovator to identify opportunities—or value dimensions—that are ripe for exploration and exploitation (Exhibit 3.1). The extent to which you can increase value along these dimensions determines the extent to which you will be successful with an innovation project. 

The ideal innovation concept is borrowed from the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ), which calls this perfect state the ideal final result. As a ratio, the value quotient approaches infinity, or a state where all benefits of a solution are achieved at zero cost and zero harm. In TRIZ terminology, this is called working backward from perfect, which forces the innovator to break through his or her psychological inertia into new, less limiting domains of thinking. 

You can use Value Quotient (Technique 3) to compare and contrast competing solutions. 

Use Functional Analysis upstream in your ideation efforts to identify opportunities for improving the value quotient of your future solutions (see Technique 3). A simple Functional Analysis can be performed without the help of an engineer or expert. But for the details involved in complex systems, a value engineer or expert with experience is advisable if not necessary—especially when dovetailing this technique with such other formidable techniques as Axiomatic Design (Technique 31) and Function Structure (Technique 32). 

Using E/R/A, you challenge the reigning beliefs, assumptions, and limitations relative to the status quo to create a list of innovative ideas that will increase your innovation s value quotient (see Technique 3). 

Before you use this tool, it s best to make sure you have clarity on how the current process or product is used to achieve the job to be done (JTBD). Articulate the JTBD and the current approach for delivering its solution. Remind the team to stay focused on the JTBD, so that innovative solutions (with higher value quotients) can be generated, not just incremental improvements to current solutions. (For more information, see Jobs To Be Done, Technique 1.)... 

Provocation is the stepping stone that allows you to carve out useful ideas from illogical thoughts, while keeping an eye on your innovation s value quotient (see Technique 3 for more on this concept). 

The 76 Standard Solutions are contained in the field of TRIZ, specifically substance f eld modeling (Su-Field). As with other TRIZ techniques like Functional Analysis, the 76 Standard Solutions are vested in the notion that all systems can and will be progressively modified to improve their value quotient (see Technique 3). 

Create specific solution concepts that either eliminate contradictions and/or improve the system s value quotient. 

Prior to full scale production or delivery, a pilot demonstrates to stakeholders and customers how your innovation addresses both provider and customer expectations. In addition, feedback at this stage helps you hone your offering, increasing its value quotient (see Technique 3) and bringing you closer to achieving the ideal innovation. 

Aroma value quotient of the concentration rmd orthonasal odor threshold value in water. 

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