By: Mark T. Hoske, Editor-in-Chief

March 1, 2006, Control Engineering

Everyone wants to boost innovation and creativity when designing products or processes. Yes, some people are naturally more creative than others, thus the truckload of self-help, "get in touch with your inner imagination" books on the market. Is it possible for engineers to increase creativity? Absolutely. Integration of scientific, practical, and artistic knowledge is creative. That's why engineering's fun.

To improve products' and processes' designs, fuel creativity with a rich passion for design and innovation, suggest Richard Seymour and Dick Powell, cofounders of Seymourpowell, a 20-year-old London-based product-design consultancy, and co-stars of a British television show on product design. To do that:

Factor in cultural changes. Ideas come with rich knowledge, immersion in everything that's going on-society, people, technology, science, business, and economic trends; Think differently by using ideas related to people, rather than things. Watch for ideas among the unexpected. Telephones, penicillin, and microwave ovens emerged en-route to another "destination." Step outside traditional processes to envision new categories of design; Observe what people do over what they say — they might deceive themselves about what they think they want. Don't be stifled by constraints; and Start early, seven or eight years ahead, look back to the present, then create stepping-stones to get to where you need to be.

Design can be a creative event. Seymour and Powell, who spoke recently at SolidWorks World, suggest assembling people with knowledge, research, ideas, and beliefs to "roast" traditional thinking and develop a concept in a short time, perhaps 48 hours.

Then, avoid the agonizing death of an idea after its birth. To move effectively to implementation, suggests Walter Herbst, professor and director of the Managing Product Design program at Northwestern University, implement a structured process, identify opportunities through "Gap Analysis," conduct end-user-focused innovation research, and manage intellectual property for use as a corporate strategy. Herbst, founder of Herbst LaZar Bell, said to be the largest, privately held, U.S. product-design firm, observes, "Everyone is talking about innovation today."

No kidding. Innovative product and manufacturing design are topics of more than a dozen of the National Manufacturing Week sessions, March 20-23, near Chicago. For more from each source mentioned, read this column at www.controleng.com/archive March 2006