On October 15, the Wukesong Forum, hosted by the School of Intellectual Property, opened in Room Z508 of the School of Intellectual Property. The lecture invited Dr. Zhou Qiaomei of the School of Intellectual Property to serve as the keynote speaker. Under the theme "Innovation Has a Method: TRIZ Thinking," the lecture focused on the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) and systematically deconstructed the replicable methodology behind innovation, guiding teachers and students out of the misconception that "innovation relies on inspiration" and onto the scientific path of recognizing that "innovation follows laws."

The lecture began with the origins of TRIZ. In 1946, the inventor Genrich Altshuller, while serving as a patent examiner, began to conduct a systematic study of large numbers of invention patents. Altshuller found that only about 1% of innovation problems were entirely new, while 99% had already been solved in other fields. What TRIZ does is precisely to distill the problem-solving approaches for that 99% into systematic tools that can be used repeatedly. Dr. Zhou Qiaomei, the speaker, pointed out that TRIZ is not a set of rules of thumb, but a learnable and replicable scientific method. Its theoretical system covers five pillars: the concept of levels of innovation, the concept of the evolution of technical systems, the concept of ideality, the concept of contradiction elimination, and the concept of maximizing the use of resources.

The concept of contradiction elimination was one of the focal points of the lecture. The lecture distinguished between technical contradictions and physical contradictions: a smartphone's battery life versus its weight, and a car's safety versus its energy consumption, constitute typical technical contradictions; while the opposition between a "high friction coefficient" and a "low wear rate" in brake pads presents the basic form of a physical contradiction.

This session of the Wukesong Forum featured a cutting-edge theme and practical content, presenting TRIZ — a classic innovation methodology — to students in a tangible and actionable way. It further built a high-quality platform for academic exchange and the exchange of ideas, broadened students' academic horizons in systematic innovation, contradiction analysis, and resource utilization, and is of positive significance for promoting the interdisciplinary integration of design, engineering innovation, and inventive methodology.