(88b) Non-Traditional Methods to Enhance Creativity for Engineering Innovation

Enhanced creativity among U.S. engineers and scientists is required in the face of strategic needs for innovation in numerous areas including: energy, the environment and health. NSF's third generation Engineering Research Centers explicitly require an educational component to enhance creativity to improve innovation. We have applied an approach to improving creativity that has traditionally not been used in technical innovation. The approach uses concepts that have been successfully applied to innovation in non-technical fields, such as business and marketing, by overcoming the two basic challenges that have prevented success in science and engineering. The first challenge is overcoming the cultural aversion in scientists and engineers to exploiting a natural origin of creative energy: humor. The theoretical equivalence of humor and innovation is well documented, and improvisational humor is nothing more than a stochastic simulation algorithm that traverses idea space. However, scientists and engineers have difficulty excepting this concept. Even successful applications such as the ?Humor Room? at the Kodak Corporation find resistance among technical managers because they believe this approach is inappropriate. We have modified improvisational humor exercises to traverse technical idea space and to overcome the limitations that have prevented success of this approach in the technical arena. The results from preliminary application of this protocol to engineering design will be discussed. These results indicate the potential for this approach to positively impact technical innovation.