Eliminating technical obstacles in innovation pipelines using CAIs

Ill-structured problems are difficult types to solve. When this type of problem is faced in an innovation pipeline, a technical obstacle emerges. Comparison between the definitions of ill-structured and inventive problems in theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) shows that the latter is a sub-set of the former in engineering. As a result, computer-aided innovation (CAI) systems (CAIs) based on TRIZ can be applied to solve some ill-structured problems that appear in an innovation pipeline. A model including two technical obstacles is developed for an innovation pipeline, and a case study is carried out to show how to eliminate the technical obstacles using the model.