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Radical innovations (RIs) bring dramatic progress of existing technologies. Although the QFD (Quality function deployment) and TRIZ (Theory of innovation problem solving) integration provides a framework of innovation activities, it is a challenge to effectively use this framework for RIs. QFD is extended into two phases including a product House of quality (HoQ) and a design HoQ in this research to support design decisions for RIs. Based on HoQs, TRIZ-based methods of the function decomposition and performance analysis are developed in product HoQ to identify performance features of RIs. TRIZ tools including 76 standard solutions and trimming strategies are applied in design HoQ to decide product specifications for a systematic approach of RIs. The proposed approach is applied in the design of a wind power system. The feasibility and effectiveness of the method are proved.

Innovation activities are required for industry to develop competitive products in response to rapid changes of the market. Radical innovation (RI) enables products long-term technical advantages and market competitiveness. However, the existing RI research focuses on areas of the business and management. There is a lack of an effective method of RI for product development. This paper proposes a systematic effect solving method (ESM) for radical innovation of product design. The ESM includes the problem identification, function analysis, key problem determination, effect selection, structure mapping and scheme evaluation. The proposed method can not only improve the possibility of developing RI products, but also save time in design. The method is applied to develop a new type of wind turbines with a granted patent. Feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method is proved.