TRIZ by Jessica Walsh

T.R.I.Z or The Theory of Innovative Problem-Solving is an eight to ten week programme offered to transition year or fifth year students by the UCC Plus programme. Luckily for us this year all girls in Transition Year doing higher level French and English have gotten a place on the programme. T.R.I.Z. is based on the Russian problem-solving theory developed between the years of 1946 and 1985, but I won’t go too much into the history.

T.R.I.Z. for us is run by an innovator called Mr. John McSweeney. Every Wednesday we met for a double class to work on new innovative ideas which eventually we hope to go to UCC with in May for a grand final in hope to win the T.R.I.Z. Cup for Innovation. To win this elusive cup we must create and design an innovative product or service and give a presentation based on it in a lecture hall in UCC full of the other teams from all over Cork trying their luck to win…so no pressure.

To help us work on ideas and take notes for our presentations John has invited our whole year to Mayfield Community School on Friday November 14th to have his second year engineering students from UCC to give us presentations on the work they have done in their latest module. It should be very interesting and valuable experience for the entire year not only the girls on the T.R.I.Z. team.

Overall T.R.I.Z. is a fantastic programme and is undoubtedly enjoyed very much by every girl participating. With the help of John we are working very well and also having great fun too. With the school only ever winning the T.R.I.Z. Cup once before the pressure is on, but I have a feeling we are in with a good chance of being the second.