When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, people flooded from East to West, but ideas mainly travelled in the opposite direction, with the spread of market economics into the former Communist bloc.

But some ideas did gravitate from East to West, including a then unknown problem-solving technique called TRIZ.

The Soviet Union had undeniable strengths in engineering science and the lives of engineers are full of problems. The cleverest ones enjoy bending their minds by inventing, improving, designing, making and mending as well as evolving new systems and measurements.

An acronym of its Russian title, Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch, TRIZ is said to encapsulate the science of creativity. And it is not based on a Eureka moment, but on a systematic trawl through existing knowledge.

By surveying patent information from hundreds of thousands of inventions, the Soviet engineer and science-fiction author Genrich Altshuller and his colleagues found some common patterns.

Karen Gadd, whose company Oxford Creativity provides much of the UK’s TRIZ training, said: “It did not come to the West until the mid-1990s, when TRIZ masters came from behind the Iron Curtain — a bit like Jedi masters. I learnt it from a couple of them.”

Mrs Gadd studied mechanical engineering at Imperial College, London, before moving into concert promotion, founding a company called Music At Oxford, holding large-scale concerts supported by business sponsors.

Music At Oxford is still in operation as a charity but in 1995 she changed course, returning to her engineering and business roots, though she still works for the Orchestra of St John’s in her spare time.

Her father, Ken, was an engineer, having worked at Pressed Steel in Cowley on an innovative goods vehicle, the RoadRailer, which could run on both railways and roads.

She became fascinated by TRIZ, which had been unknown in the West when she took her degree.

“It took me a couple of years to get my head around it and now I am passionate about it,” she said.

She is not the only one. A recent article in Forbes business magazine attributed the success of Samsung's smartphone to its adoption of TRIZ, with four Altshuller disciples flown to South Korea to teach its scientists to innovate rather than copy.

The global director of innovation at Procter & Gamble is reported to be skilled in TRIZ, while the Institute of Mechanical Engineers says Dow Chemical is using it to developing new polymers and Otis Elevator used it to prevent escalator belts from wearing.

Other successes include solving car transmission problems at Peugeot, reducing the weight of containment rings for aircraft engines and eradicating noise problems in air conditioners.

Mrs Gadd, whose company provides training for Institute members, describes TRIZ as “a problem-solving toolkit which can change your life” allowing you to discover all possible ways of solving a problem, to find new concepts and the routes for developing new products.

She was attracted to it because it is systematic, rather than using the random ‘brainstorming’ beloved of creative industries.

She said: "TRIZ has simple general lists of how to solve any problem. These TRIZ solution triggers are distilled from analysing all known engineering success. There are also tools for problem understanding, for system analysis and for understanding what we want.

"TRIZ offers systematic innovation. By learning TRIZ and following its rules we can accelerate creative problem solving for both individuals and project teams."

She believes the key to its success is that it uses knowledge from a wide range of inventions and does not just rely on "the spontaneous and occasional creativity of individuals, or groups of engineers, within their organisation".

She said: "It works so well that many, many companies are now using it, all over the world. I have been teaching in Korea and China, where it is very big and training female scientists and engineers in Saudi Arabia," she said.

The 12-strong team, based at Long Hanborough, runs courses up and down the UK, for BA Systems, Varian and the British nuclear industry.

Oxfordshire companies using the technique include Owen Mumford, Siemens and Oxford Instruments and Mrs Gadd is keen to build up more local work to avoid long-haul travel.

She said: "We do not just work with engineering companies — there are banks, credit control companies, the NHS, Culham, Harwell and places like that. It is very exciting to be involved in the big things."

She says TRIZ can fit in with better known engineering techniques such as Six Sigma, QFD and Taguchi.

"Because it was developed in the Soviet Union between 1945 and 1990, it is completely different from other toolkits out there. It falls into the gaps of those and is completely complementary."

Her book, Triz For Engineers, was published by WileyBlackwell two years ago.

Inspired by the arrival of five grandchildren, she is now writing another on problem-solving for children, with the help of Oxford cartoonist Clive Goddard.

The company is a family affair, with her psychologist daughter Lilly Haines Gadd now managing director.

"The thing about TRIZ is that it is so self-evident. It helps in all the things we really care about," Mrs Gadd said.

Contact: 01993 882461 Web: www.triz.co.uk