TRIZ

Definition: TRIZ is the Russian acronym for the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. It is an algorithmic problem solving approach for technical and technological problems, using patterns of previous inventions in the global patent literature.
The TRIZ process has the following 4 steps:
1. Identify the problem
2. Formulate the problem
3. Search for a previously well-solved problem (using 39 engineering parameters)
4. Look for analogous solutions and adapt to the solution (using 40 inventive principles).

More on triz. More on problem solving: Catch-22, Evaporating Cloud, Heuristics, Hypothesis Testing, Intuition, more...