Innovation Tools
When working on incremental, disruptive, or radical innovations, engineers and designers use a range of tools to help them develop, refine and validate their design concepts. Design Tools support tasks from market and customer analysis, to concept generation, to numerical and computational modeling, prototyping and testing. Our research will focus on tool and method use during the concept generation phase of R&D.
Innovation Strategies
Design Strategies are systems and philosophies of innovation that focus on the overall approach that a company is taking towards design. The strategies are set from the upper management and dictate the types of projects that their employees should pursue. They do not provide detail on the specific tasks and actions that designers carry out on a day to day basis. This research will not focus on the adoption of design strategies.
Examples of Innovation Tools
Design Thinking
Design thinking has a history extending from the 1950s and ’60s, with roots in the study of design cognition and design methods. It has also been referred to as “designerly ways of knowing, thinking and acting” and as “designerly thinking”. Many of the key concepts and aspects of design thinking have been identified through studies, across different design domains, of design cognition and design activity in both laboratory and natural contexts.
Design thinking may be considered a Strategy in some organizations – a holistic approach to design – whereas in other organizations is may be viewed as a tool or method for aligning design activities with customer needs.
Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a creativity technique in which a group of people interact to suggest ideas spontaneously in response to a prompt. Stress is typically placed on the volume and variety of ideas, including ideas that may seem outlandish or “off-the-wall”. Ideas are noted down during the activity, but not assessed or critiqued until later. The absence of criticism and assessment is intended to avoid inhibiting participants in their idea production
Mind Mapping
A mind map is a diagram used to visually organize information into a hierarchy, showing relationships among pieces of the whole. It is often created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words and parts of words are added. Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other ideas branch out from those major ideas.
Tech Mining/Patent Mining
Tech mining or technology mining refers to applying text mining methods to technical documents. For patent analysis purposes, it is named ‘patent mining’. Porter, as one of the pioneers in technology mining, defined ‘tech mining’ in his book as follows: “the application of text mining tools to science and technology information, informed by understanding of technological innovation processes.” Therefore, tech mining has two significant characteristics: 1) using ‘text mining tools’, 2) applying these tools to ‘technology management’. Also, technology mining can be considered as one of technology intelligence branches.
Biologically Inspired Design
Biologically Inspired Design or Bioinspiration is the development of novel materials, devices, and structures inspired by solutions found in biological evolution and refinement which has occurred over millions of years. The goal is to improve modeling and simulation of the biological system to attain a better understanding of nature’s critical structural features, such as a wing, for use in future bioinspired designs. Biologically inspired design differs from biomimicry in that the latter aims to precisely replicate the designs of biological materials. Bioinspired design research is a return to the classical origins of science: it is a field based on observing the remarkable functions that characterize living organisms and trying to abstract and imitate those functions.
Word Tree
A novel approach, referred to as the WordTree Design-by-Analogy Method, identifies analogies as part of the ideation process. Numerous examples of innovation through analogy are found throughout current trade journals, magazines and product offerings. Although a few notable computational knowledge bases have been created to support analogous design, very few methods provide suitable guidance on how to identify analogies and analogous domains. The WordTree Method derives its effectiveness through a design team’s knowledge and readily available information sources but does not require specialized computational knowledge bases.
Examples of Innovation Strategies
Open Innovation
The term open innovation means a situation where an organization doesn’t just rely on their own internal knowledge, sources and resources (such as their own staff or R&D for example) for innovation (of products, services, business models, processes etc.) but also uses multiple external sources (such as customer feedback, published patents, competitors, external agencies, the public etc.) to drive innovation
Lean Innovation
Lean is a manufacturing philosophy that Toyota developed in the 1940s. The core idea behind lean is to eliminate waste in all forms and to improve processes continuously. This philosophy can be applied to any business, not just manufacturing.
One of the primary goals of lean is to identify and eliminate non-value-added activities. These activities don’t add value to the product or service but still consume resources, such as time or money. By eliminating these activities, a company can reduce costs, improve quality and free up resources to focus on innovation.
Intrapreneurship
Intrapreneurship is a system which allows an employee to act like an entrepreneur within an organization. Intrapreneurs are self-motivated, proactive, and action-oriented people who have leadership skills and think outside the box. Intrapreneurship is one step toward entrepreneurship — intrepreneurs can use what they’ve learned as part of a team to develop their own businesses.