A technology-push product concept generation problem is specified in terms of a new technology and a target product/industry/business domain for which the technology is to be utilized to create novel products/applications.

This study presents a novel ideation aid termed technologically-related products from other domains (TeRPODs) for addressing technology-push product concept generation problems. These findings offer new evidence that structured techniques like TRIZ reduce cognitive activation, change patterns of activation and increase coordination between regions in the brain. Morphological analysis and TRIZ also enable greater coordination (i.e., synchronized activation) between brain regions. This region is associated with convergent thinking and making judgments. TRIZ produces more cognitive activation in the left DLPFC. These regions are associated with divergent thinking and ill-defined problem-solving. The highest cognitive activation when brainstorming and using morphological analysis is in the right dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) and ventrolateral PFC. The results indicate that brainstorming and morphological analysis demand more cognitive activation across the prefrontal cortex (PFC) compared to TRIZ.

The results are based on the area under the curve analysis of oxygenated hemodynamic response as well as an assessment of functional connectivity using Pearson’s correlation to compare students’ cognitive brain activations using these three different ideation techniques. Changes in students’ brain activation in the prefrontal cortex were measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy.

This paper presents the results of studying the brain activations of 30 engineering students when using three different design concept generation techniques: brainstorming, morphological analysis, and TRIZ.

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