When faced with engineering creativity challenges, most organizations use brainstorming as their only approach. Developed in the 1950s by Alex Osborn for developing advertising campaigns, brainstorming is a good approach. It's not the only approach, though, and in many cases, it's not the best approach.
To use some phrases from aerospace, brainstorming often results in an undesirable combination of high terminal velocity and inadequate midflight guidance. What we need are approaches to guide our brainstorming such that our energy is focused on solving creativity challenges. We need to focus our creative energies on the design challenge.
I employ three creativity stimulation techniques: biomimicry, nine screens, and TRIZ. Biomimicry comes from the Greek words bios (life) and mimesis (to imitate). Nature is an engineer with 4 billion years of experience (she's solved a lot of problems in that time), and biomimicry looks to nature for creative inspiration. Sometimes simply thinking about examples in nature guides us to solutions. At other times, we can use a more structured approach to state the challenge and follow a prescribed brainstorming path to potential solutions.
Biomimicry is a fascinating approach with a strong creativity track record. Japan's bullet train is based on a bird's profile. Noise-minimizing leading edges for wind-powered generators are based on whale fins, and smart munition detect-and-select sensor fusion is based on the rattlesnake's integration of vibration, heat, and visual inputs.
Nine screens is another great approach for focused brainstorming. It includes a three-by-three matrix (creating nine screens) with the design challenge in the center. The nine screens suggest both system level and time perspectives, with time along one axis and system level on the other. The concept is to look to the past and the future for potential solutions, and to consider both component and higher-level system perspectives. This creates nine perspectives from which to consider the design challenge.
Science fiction is a good way to look to the future; the movie Alien inspired new military weaponry. The Civil War Gatling gun inspired modern high-rate-of-fire aircraft armaments.
TRIZ is a third powerful creativity stimulation concept. It's an acronym formed from the Russian words for "theory of inventive problem solving." Genrich Altshuller was a Soviet patent officer who noticed inventive patterns in patent applications. Sent to the gulags by Stalin, Altshuller survived to create the TRIZ approach with its 40 inventive principles and the associated 39-by-39 contradiction matrix.
TRIZ involves stating a creativity challenge and finding its inherent contradiction. It uses the contradiction (for example, light weight and high strength) to find potentially applicable inventive principles in the contradiction matrix. The inventive principles are usually not direct answers to the creativity challenge, but they create brainstorming initiation points. It's been said that the bolt-action rifle is based on a simple gate latch (a great concept that became the cover of my book, Unleashing Engineering Creativity).
Joe Berk, a principal member of the Eogogics faculty, teaches process FMEA, root cause failure analysis, engineering statistics, design of experiments, statistical process control, quality management, cost reduction, engineering creativity, technical management/leadership, and technical communications. Before starting his training/consulting practice, he held senior management positions in the engineering, quality assurance, and manufacturing industries. He will host an online class on unleashing creativity on April 25.
Thanks for the explanation, Joe. That makes perfect sense to me and clarified the points you were making in the article. I can recall countless engineering meetings where our brainstorming went down bunny trails that got lost in the forest and didn't emerge for hours! Focus can be a very good thing...
It sounds like that will be a fascinating training session and I love the title - I have always enjoyed the creative aspects of engineering and being able to think "out of the box" is crucial for a test engineer. Thanks again for a very interesting article and I hope to make the Weblive training session if my schedule permits.
Thanks for your inputs, apresher and everyone else. If you'd like to learn more, Eogogics is offering a free one-hour weblive class on 25 April, and you can sign up at www.eogogics.com. It won't be a sales presentation, and I'll be the guy presenting it. If you want more information, feel free to contact me at joeb@gogics.com.
For everyone who left a post, my apologies for taking so long to reply. I've been overseas training in these areas, and I am just now catching up.
Brainstorming generally refers to an unfettered flow of ideas, with quantity being more important than quality. The thought is that many ideas will result in one or more good ones, and the concern is that the ideas should not be evaluated or critiqued during the brainstorming session as this might tend to slow the flow.
One of the disadvantages of brainstorming is that the conversation can go off on a tangent. The other approaches suggested here tend to focus the brainstorming in particular areas, generally resulting in more useable suggestions.
All of this is explained in more detail in Unleashing Engineering Creativity, and we'll touch on it during our Weblive training session on 25 April at noon Eastern time. You can sign up for the course for free at www.eogogics.com. I hope to see you there.
Have to agree Cabe, calculation and simulation seems to be a better use of time. Sometimes, though, you just get a "hunch" about something and it pays to follow it. Subliminal engineering, perhaps?
What does TRIZ stand for, is it an acronym? Whatever path you take for inspiration in a design is a good way. Unlike Edison, I say calculate and simulate is the best way to go. Never try the "10,000 things that don't work" first.
Joseph, I enjoyed your article and appreciate the three methods that you touched on. However, I was a bit confused regarding the use of "brainstorming" and "approaches to brainstorming" as to me, they seem quite similar. Could you please provide a good working definition of brainstorming as it pertains to your article? I think that would clarify it for me - thanks!
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