Idea Generation for Fuzzy Front End Using TRIZ and TOC

Author(s):  
Guoping Li ◽  
Runhua Tan ◽  
Zhansheng Liu ◽  
Huangao Zhang
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 88
Author(s):  
Berit Sandberg

In a highly competitive business environment, integrating artists into corporate research and development (R&D) seems to be a promising way to foster inventiveness and idea generation. Given the importance of individual level innovation for product development, this study explores the benefits that employees experience from the artist-in-residence-program at Robert Bosch GmbH, Germany. Qualitative content analysis of interviews with scientists and engineers was performed in order to explore the impact of their encounters with artists in the theoretical framework of the triadic concept and transmission model of inspiration. The findings corroborate the notion that inspiration is a suitable theoretical underpinning for individual benefits of art–science collaborations in the front end of innovation. Scientists and engineers are inspired by the artists’ otherness and transcend their usual modes of perception in favor of enhanced focal, peripheral and bifocal vision. Whereas shifts in perspective are reflected in individual thinking patterns, researchers are hardly motivated to change their work-related behavior. The exchange with artists does not have a concrete impact on technological innovation, because researchers neither integrate impulses into their experiential world nor link them to fields of activity. In the case under scrutiny, artistic impulses do not contribute to idea generation in the sense of front-end activities. The study contributes to research on artists in businesses by illuminating the R&D environment as a hitherto neglected field of activity. While substantiating previous research on artist-in-science-residencies, the results suggest that the potential of such interdisciplinary endeavors is limited.


2006 ◽  
Vol 03 (01) ◽  
pp. 43-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
CORNELIUS HERSTATT ◽  
CHRISTOPH STOCKSTROM ◽  
BIRGIT VERWORN ◽  
AKIO NAGAHIRA

In this paper, we report on the results of a large-scale study about typical front-end-related innovation practices in 553 Japanese mechanical and electrical engineering companies. We explore typical activities concerning the generation and assessment of new product ideas, the reduction of technological as well as market uncertainty and front end planning. Finally, we report on the differences between successful and unsuccessful companies. Our study confirms earlier findings about the frequent use of creativity techniques in Japan during the process of idea generation. We also find companies to be intensively involved in upper management and customers on NPD projects. While integrating upper management is of vital importance for assessing new product ideas, integrating customers and users is primarily used to developing product ideas and concepts. We further find evidence that successful companies integrate their customers more frequently in the process of developing and assessing new product ideas than non-successful companies. In addition, the former integrate customer requirements into their product definitions more often and also translate these requirements into technical specifications more frequently than non-successful companies. Finally, successful companies more often systematically plan a project prior to its start than unsuccessful ones.


Author(s):  
Xuan Zheng ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller

Designing breakthrough products comes at a great cost to the design industry due to the risk and uncertainties associated with creative ideas. However, without creative ideas, there is no potential for innovation. As such, companies need to appropriately embrace the risk associated with creative concepts in the fuzzy front end of the design process in order to build their value. While previous research has linked risk taking attitudes to creative idea generation and selection in engineering design education, there has been limited research focused on engineering design professionals’ creative risk taking attitude and the corresponding driving factors. This is problematic because without this knowledge we do not know what factors inhibit or promote the flow of creative ideas in engineering design industry. In order to address this gap, a preliminary online survey was conducted with 46 design professionals from a global manufacturing company to understand the potential driving factors of creative risk taking, including educational training, job type (R&D, applied engineering, or management), and years of experience. The results suggest that there is a relationship between employee education level and years of experience and an engineering employee’s willingness to take risks on creative ideas in the fuzzy front end of the design process. Interestingly, the results also show that those individuals primarily responsible for the development (R&D) and selection (management) of creative ideas tend to be more financially risk averse than individuals in traditional engineering positions. These results contribute to the prediction of professionals’ design behaviors and have implications for the management of creative ideas in the early conceptual design stages of engineering design industry.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 111-120
Author(s):  
Nuno Miguel Martins Pacheco ◽  
Anand Vazhapilli Sureshbabu ◽  
Masaru Charles Nürnberger ◽  
Laura Isabel Durán Noy ◽  
Markus Zimmermann

AbstractStart-ups tend to form with a central idea that differentiates them from their competitors in the market. It is crucial for them to efficiently transform the idea into a marketable product. Prototyping helps to iteratively achieve a minimum viable product and plays a crucial role by enabling teams to test their ideas with limited resources early on. However, the prototyping process may have wrong focus leading to a suboptimal allocation of resources. Previously, we proposed role-based prototyping for fuzzy front-end development in small teams. It supports (1) resource allocation, (2) the definition of responsibilities, and (3) structuring the development process with milestones. In recent research this was a promising yet incomplete approach. We extend the previous work by refining the prototyping process by adding a prototyping matrix with two dimensions (purpose and lens), a prototyping cycle (plan, execute, test, reflect, assimilate), and a modified Kanban board (Protoban) for planning, managing, and reflecting cycles. This process, named PETRA was tested with a start-up developing an autonomous trash picking robot. The extended approach supported the team significantly in providing a clear idea of what to do at what time.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 3431-3440
Author(s):  
Camilla Arndt Hansen ◽  
Nuno Miguel Martins Pacheco ◽  
Ali Gürcan Özkil ◽  
Markus Zimmermann

AbstractPrototyping is essential for fuzzy front-end product development. The prototyping process answers questions about critical assumptions and supports design decisions, but it is often unstructured and context-dependent. Previously, we showed how to guide novice designers in early development stages with prototyping milestones. Here, we studied the prototyping success perceived by novice design teams. This was done in two steps: (1) teams were asked to assign each prototype to a milestone, a specific purpose, a fidelity level, and a human-centered design lens, and then evaluate the success using a predefined set of criteria. (2) Teams were interviewed about the success of the prototyping process, this time using self-chosen criteria. Results related to (1) show that teams perceived prototyping activities with respect to desirability and problem validation significantly less successful than prototyping activities towards feasibility and solution validation. Results related to (2) show that teams mostly chose success criteria related to how well prototypes supported communication, decision making, learning, and tangibility. This insight may be used to give priorities to further improvement of methods and guidance in these areas.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 1953 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lore Veelaert ◽  
Els Du Bois ◽  
Ingrid Moons ◽  
Patrick De Pelsmacker ◽  
Sara Hubo ◽  
...  

As designing with recycled materials is becoming indispensable in the context of a circular economy, we argue that understanding how recycled plastics are perceived by stakeholders involved in the front end of the design process, is essential to achieve successful application in practice, beyond the current concept of surrogates according to industry. Based on existing frameworks, 34 experiential scales with semantic opposites were used to evaluate samples of three exemplary recycled plastics by two main industrial stakeholders: 30 material engineers and 30 designers. We describe four analyses: (i) defining experiential material characteristics, (ii) significant differences between the materials, (iii) level of agreement of respondents, and (iv) similarities and differences between designers and engineers. We conclude that the three materials have different perceptual profiles or identities that can initiate future idea generation for high-quality applications. The study illustrates the potential of this evaluation method. We propose that designers can facilitate the valorization and adoption of these undervalued recycled materials, first by industry and ultimately by consumers as well.


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