Practical Creativity and Innovation in Systems Engineering

Avner Engel

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781119383239
• eBook ISBN: 9781119383383
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Tecnologia e ingegneria
• Subtopic: Ingegneria elettronica e telecomunicazioni

A guide to systems engineering that highlights creativity and innovation in order to foster great ideas and carry them out

Practical Creativity and Innovation in Systems Engineering exposes engineers to a broad set of creative methods they can adopt in their daily practices. In addition, this book guides engineers to become entrepreneurs within traditional engineering companies, promoting creative and innovative culture around them.

The author describes basic systems engineering concepts and includes an abbreviated summary of Standard 15288 systems' life cycle processes. He then provides an extensive collection of practical creative methods which are linked to the various systems' life cycle processes. Next, the author discusses obstacles to innovation and, in particular, how engineers can push creative ideas through layers of reactionary bureaucracy within non-innovative organizations. Finally, the author provides a comprehensive description of an exemplary creative and innovative case study recently completed.

The book is filled with illustrative examples and offers effective guidelines that can enhance individual engineers' creative prowess as well as be used to create an organizational culture where creativity and innovation flourishes. This important book:

• Offers typical systems engineering processes that can be accomplished in creative ways throughout the development and post-development portions of a system's lifetime.
• Includes a large collection of practical creative methods applicable to engineering and other technological domains
• Includes innovation advice needed to transform creative ideas into new products, services, businesses and marketing processes
• Contains references and notes for further reading in every section

Written for systems engineering practitioners, graduate school students and faculty members of systems, electrical, aerospace, mechanical and industrial engineering schools, Practical Creativity and Innovation in Systems Engineering offers a useful guide for creating a culture that promotes innovation.

Part I
Introduction

“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

1.1 Introduction to Part I

The aim of this book is to acquaint engineers in general and systems engineers in particular with the practical art of creativity and innovation. Systems engineers are people with a capacity to understand many engineering, scientific, and management disciplines. In addition, systems engineers tend to examine issues in a holistic way considering the total system life cycle. This capacity is obtained through formal education, as well as experience in leading multidisciplinary teams in creating, manufacturing, and maintaining complex systems within sustainable environments.¹

The basic premise of this book is that creative abilities of human beings are not fixed, inborn traits but, rather, change over their lifetime. For example, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, George Land tested the level of creativity among children and adults.² The results, presented in Figure 1.1, are quite shocking. According to the study, 98% of five‐year‐old children could be categorized as geniuses in terms of their abilities to look at problems and come up with new, different, and creative solutions. This percentage drops to 2% within the average adults’ population. Land and Jarman (1998) concluded from this longitudinal study that non‐creative behavior is learned.

Figure 1.1 Age versus imagination

Fortunately, creativity skills can also be learned. For example, Scott et al. (2004) analyzed some 70 studies related to creativity training and concluded that well‐designed training programs promoted distinct creativity performance gains across different domains and criteria. Hopefully, engineers adopting some of the creative methods discussed in this book will achieve improved creative skills as well.

Another premise of this book is that many creative engineers are stalled in their innovative efforts by organizations that claim to promote innovation but, in fact, consistently crush such efforts. Indeed, it is the author’s impression (as well as other researchers³) that, beyond boasting, the vast majority of companies and other organizations are creativity‐averse. Naturally, creative engineers working for such organizations are frustrated and discouraged. Not less important are the accumulated losses for the organizations themselves as well as to society at large from neglecting many creative ideas without due consideration. The book attempts to explore this phenomenon and offer practical advice to organizations as well as to the multitudes of demoralized engineers. In particular, engineers are advised to expand their professional and intellectual horizons, seek to reduce risks inherent in their new ideas, and learn to obtain colleagues’ support as well as deal with reactionary management. In short, adopt a more entrepreneurial attitude.

Beyond this introductory chapter, Part I of this book provides some key points and a short outline related to the other four parts of the book, namely: (1) systems engineering, (2) creative methods, (3) promoting innovative culture, and (4) creative and innovative case study. In addition, Part I closes with a relevant bibliography. Figure 1.2 depicts the overall structure and contents of the entire book.

Figure 1.2 Book’s overall structure

Part I: Introduction, true to its name, provides an introductory material to this book. Part II: Systems Engineering, describes basic systems engineering concepts as well as a partial and abbreviated depiction of Standard 15288 systems’ life cycle processes. In addition, for each process, the book identifies a relevant small set of recommended creative methods. Finally, this part presents some intriguing philosophical insights about engineering. Part III: Creative Methods, provides an extensive repertoire of practical creative methods. Part IV: Promoting Innovative Culture, describes ways and means to enhance innovative culture within organizations. In addition, this part provides advice to creative engineers employed by non‐creative organizations. Part V: Creative and Innovative Case Study, describes an exemplary creative and innovative case study. Lastly, the back matter of the book contains relevant appendices.

The book contains a massive number of visuals. This is because the author believes engineers (and probably other people) tend to focus on visuals as their immediate and primary source of understanding. Many of these visuals require permission to use third‐party copyright so, in order to reduce clutter and ease the reading process, these permissions are provided in Appendix D.

Finally, readers should note that this book does not pursue new theories or theses with regards to creativity and innovation. To the contrary, the author seeks to acquaint systems engineers with well‐established facets of creativity and innovation. In order to achieve this objective, the author drew on his engineering experience, communicated with many people, and collected information from many sources, books, articles, internet blogs, and the like (giving credit where credit's due). Sections on further reading at the end of individual chapters, as well as the bibliographies at the end of each part of the book, identify invaluable sources for deeper understanding of the various subject matters discussed in this book. The author gained much knowledge from these resources and is indebted to the individuals, researchers, and experts who created them.

1.2 Systems Engineering

There are many books dedicated to the art of systems engineering, and it is not the purpose of this book to devote much space to this subject. Therefore, the intent of Part II is to construct scaffolding, bridging the gap between the domain of systems engineering and the domains of creativity and innovation. This is done by identifying some basic systems engineering concepts and then describing some 30 systems’ life cycle processes in accordance with an abridged International Standard ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288. Each life cycle process is then associated with a specific and relevant set of recommended creative methods. Systems engineers can use these and other creative methods described in Part III to expand their creative skills and enhance their engineering output. Finally, this part provides some philosophical thoughts about engineering.

Chapter 2.2 describes basic systems engineering concepts. More specifi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Systems Engineering
• Part III: Creative Methods
• Part IV: Promoting Innovative Culture
• Part V: Creative and Innovative Case Study
• Appendix A: Life Cycle Processes versus Recommended Creative Methods
• Appendix B: Extended Laws of Technical Systems Evolution
• Appendix C: List of Acronyms
• Appendix D: Permissions to Use Third‐Party Copyright Material
• Wiley Series in Systems Engineering and Management
• Index
• End User License Agreement