The laws of technical systems evolution are the most general evolution trends for technical systems discovered by TRIZ author G. S. Altshuller after reviewing thousands USSR invention authorship certificates and foreign patent abstracts. Altshuller studied the way technical systems have been invented, developed and improved over time. He discovered several evolutionary trends that help engineers to anticipate improvements that are most likely to make it advantageous. Convergence to ideality is the most important of these laws. There are two concepts of ideality: ideality as a leading pathway of a technical system's evolution, and ideality as a synonym of "ideal final result", which is one of the basic TRIZ concepts.

History

Studying paths of evolution of technical systems has been a primary research method of TRIZ since its inception. But until the 1970s the discovered recurrent patterns of evolution were not consolidated into a separate section of TRIZ and were scattered among other sections. In the 1970s Altshuller consolidated them into a new section of TRIZ that he called "the laws of technical systems evolution". It included both previously discovered recurrent patterns of evolution and newly discovered ones. Studying "laws of evolution" became an independent research topic in TRIZ. The following authors, besides Altshuller, contributed most to it: Yuri Khotimlyansky (studied patterns of energy conductivity in technical systems), Vladimir Asinovsky (proposed principles of correspondence of various components of technical systems), Yevgeny Karasik (co-authored with Altshuller the law of transition from a macro-level to a micro-level, introduced the notion of dual technical systems and studied the patterns of their evolution).

System of laws

General information

In his pioneering work of 1975, Altshuller subdivided all laws of technical systems evolution into 3 categories:

Static Laws

Kinematic laws

Dynamic laws

Patterns of evolution

The patterns of evolution were developed by Altshuller as a set of patterns common to systems as they are developed and as they acquire new features. They are used in systems development and apply to all systems and are used for education, software, economics, business.