Creative thinking in engineering

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/careers/careerstemplate.jsp?ArticleId=c080104


Just got back from Pensylvannia. The article above talks about creativity and how to induce engineers to think creatively. There are some standard techniques like brainstorming and synetics. I was talking with a group of friends of mine and we were supposed to come up with creative ideas on what kind of startup business to get into. My thoughts on how to induce creative ideas are as follows.

1. You could ask the group to make a list of their ideas, which they think are worthy and bring them to the meeting. The participants can then have a discussion of their ideas and choose the one that is the most suitable to the problem.

2. One could motivate the participants in the group by promising a reward or some sort of prize, but then this could lead to each person aggressively marketing his idea and cutting out other ideas. Care should be taken to avoid such a situation.

3. Having a diverse group helps a lot. Having too many experts in the same area could lead to all the members thinking along the same lines and may lead to the same idea being marketed by all the participants.

4. An open culture in the company wherein thinking outside the box is encouraged should prevail.

Wednesday August 04 , 2004