Firstly, you need to formulate the most important question: what sort of consumer problem(s) is/are associated with the innovation problem? How can innovation in technology affect consumers problem solving?

One way to approach this question is to define your starting situation: do you already have an innovation that you want to implement in specific conditions where a technological innovation, for example, could improve the activity of its potential users somehow. Or do you have a more ill-defined situation where there are problems, disturbances, contradictions, disruptions etc. in the potential users' activity but no one knows yet how such problems should be addressed to improve the situation. In the former case the approach is what could be called the technology transfer approach: you market, or "sell", the innovation to the potential users and they either adopt it or not (to put it simply, although of course in practice it is never that simple). In the latter case you may have to innovate together with the practicioners who experience the need of changing something in their activity, or to change the logic of their activity more profoundly, which always brings along the need to change tools, skills, relations, division of labour, organizational structure etc. of the activity in question. In this latter case, the actual problem behind its symptoms must first be defined together with those who need to define their innovation needs. There are different methods and approaches to problem structuring, e.g. root cause analysis or root conflict analysis. There are also methods to conduct a guided innovation process with people where the goal is to define their innovation problem and design solutions to it. Sometimes it helps to start with perception mapping to map views on the innovation needs by all parties who have something at stake in the problematic issue. Once you have identified the actual problem behind its symptoms you have defined your innovation problem - and when it is defined together with those who feel the need to improve their activity you know that you are addressing the right problem, not its symptoms or consequences.

In my opinion, you won't know 100% if your question is right until you get at least an idea in which direction your answer is going. Its a forth and back at the beginning in the research process with a lot of feedback loops in exchange with academic as well as practise. (And I think the practise side is often neglected in research.)

Problems and their relevance and accuracy are very subjective. To get a feeling if your question is good (and I think there is not the ultimate single "right" question and answer) it is, like in business, testing, testing, testing, if you think your question and possible answer comes closer to what you and involved people expect/need.

I agree with Martin Kamprath.

But I need to discuss the terms.

First : Innovation refers to economic concerns. The only way to know if a new product, process, organisation... is an innovation is to confront it to the market and to observe wheter it find a market or fails. For this reason, as I am a teacher and researcher in mechanical design, I try not to use the term "innovation". I prefer invention, inventive solution ...

Second. "Problem" is by itself an ill defined term. I try to see it from the problem solver point of view and from a product point of view.

For the problem solver, see Martin's comment. If you are not able to imagine the solving process, it is a problem. You cannot first describe a procedure or a process. You will have to try, to test, to search for knowledge, to reflect on your process, ... to doubt. There are easy problems (you try one concept and you find a solution). There are hard problems (you have to try multiple concepts untill satisfaction). There are also very difficult and impossible problems (you try, try, try...). I agree with the idea that all is subjective (A problem for me may be a non problem for you).

For the product point of view. My vision of design is to see design as a process that tries to reach a satifying solution (H Simon). Which I define as an application from means to effects both surjective and satisfying. An application means that means are defined (drawings, CAD definition, list of components...). effects are defined (functions, need, siding effects...), and effects are related to means (application of product rules, use of physics knowledge, product tests, ... validation). Surjective: each effects is related to at least one mean. Satisfying... effects are evaluated relatively to some reference; evaluation too is subjective . When all these conditions are met, it is a solution. When one condition is not good, this is a problem. Therefore, ther are different types of problems.

An inventive solution can be defined as a new application from means to effects. I mean a qualitatively new application that draws new relations between (new or not) means and (new or not) effects.

Finally, an inventive problem... I do not know.

Unless we define it as a problem with an inventive solution.... afterwards.

This is surely a case where in principle discussion is pretty useless. How to frame the question is a matter of practice, not theory. So advice should be given relative to examples rather than in principal.

Of course, innovation problems like all problems are context-dependent. However, your very understanding of what you are trying to define and how you approach the "unknowable" is critical. If we argue that everything is of practical nature, there would be no need for theory and for theoretical exploration. Theory helps us if it opens different ways at seeing the world, including the nature and handling of innovation problems. I believe theory can help not only scholars, but also practitioners. Helpful classsic readings have argued that innovation problems are wicked or ill-structured problems that cannot easily be predefined, otherwise they would not be novel. Innovation problems are multi-context problems, which means they can be defined in quite different ways and in the beginning we have no simple rule of judging which interpretation is leading to the most appropriate definition and later solution of a novel problem. For this reason more sensible approaches to innovation problems have used dialectical approaches to decision-making.

see:

Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. 1973. Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2): 155-169.

Mason, R., O., & Mitroff, I. I. 1981. Challenging strategic planning assumptions: Theory, cases and techniques. New York: Wiley.

For those who read German you may like to have a look at my older book:

Reihlen, M. 1997. Entwicklungsfähige Planungssysteme. Grundlagen, Konzepte und Anwendungen zur Bewältigung von Innovationsproblemen. Wiesbaden: Deutscher Universitätsverlag.

Best wishes

Markus

I agree with what Markus says. I think theory is helpful, and innovation is trelated to the theory of change. So it helps to understand innovation and innovation problems when one has a theory of change in the background guiding one's search. Depending on how one understands change to happen in our productivie activities we also have different viewpoints on innovation. There also seems to be different understandings on what each of us means with innovation. Some people seem to correlate innovation with invention. Others see innovation as the umbrella term under which invention forms one particular stage in a chain, or, rather, a cycle. To me, invention becomes innovation when the former has been adopted to use and adjusted according to the productive activity's processes and other aspects of its organization. So I personally regard innovation as a process rather than an event or a thing.

TRIZ focus on inventive problem, problem that have contradiction that not many prefer to solve them unless using trade-off or optimise.

The result of solving this inventive problem will be always, innovation. Furthermore, trends analysis and forecasting goes beyond innovation, ahead of competition. Thats what big industries that used TRIZ do (Intel, P&G, Samsung, GE, Philips, etc.).

Cheers.

You are asking this question to TRIZ experts, among other experts. That was a wise move, because TRIZ alone can not answer it, since it is focused on invention, and not innovation.

That being said, the Ideal Final Result concept from TRIZ contains part of your answer. It can be used as a means of finding the best innovation problems for an organization to focus on.