Research on IFR of Technological Evolution Bifurcations

Idealization is a powerful tool in TRIZ, and it plays an important role in innovation processes. In the fierce market competition, in order to adopt new technology and make their product approach to ideal product, enterprises spare no effort to improve the degree of product's idealization. At the bifurcation points of product technology evolution, the ideal result that customers need changes, but because of the existence of conventional thinking and market competition, engineers always engage in designing according to the original target ideal result, finally the technology innovation opportunities are lost, so it is of great significance to study the Ideal Final Result (IFR) at the bifurcation points. According to different innovation processes of S-curves, the IFR for product's technology evolution bifurcations are divided into four classifications, Incremental Innovation Ideal Final Result(IFR_II), Radical Innovation Ideal Final Result(IFR_RI), Low-end Disruptive Innovation Ideal Final Result(IFR_LDI) and New-market Disruptive Innovation Ideal Final Result(IFR_NDI). Product's technology system consists of several technology sub-systems, correspondingly, ideal product is made up of several idealized technology sub-systems. It is the objective of product design that realizing the idealization of technology subsystem through innovation design, however, because the presence of conflicts and design constraints among technology sub-systems, the design aim for realizing ideal final results of each sub-system is almost impossible. Therefore, in designing processes, engineers always give priority to several mainstream technology sub-systems and realize their idealization first. This paper decomposes IFR into several ideal results of sub-systems based on a technical system decomposition method, researches a process of technology evolution and a changing process of sub-systems’ ideal results, determines evolution bifurcations’ direction of technology systems through the combination of the sub-systems’ ideal results and then realizes the technology forecasting at the evolution bifurcation points.