Engineers, by their very nature, are problem solvers. Most engineering jobs come with demands to apply creativity in a scientific manner, and engineers need to innovate day in and day out. However, while engineers always study innovations, the thought processes and techniques that are used to build innovations are rarely studied. Mastering lateral thinking processes is the key to being innovative, and this article gives you information on how to do that.
The creative thought process has been the subject of research and study for quite some time in other fields like marketing, but people in engineering jobs rarely understand its importance. According to Philip Kotler and Fernando Trias De Bes, "innovations are a result of connecting two ideas which, in principle, had no apparent or immediate connection." Innovations are as important to marketers as to engineers, since innovative new products and services provide the chance of creating new markets. The process of creating innovations involves focusing on an existing product and redesigning it to cover needs, situations, uses, or targets that are not currently covered.
While redesigning or innovating, an engineer has to focus on:
•How can the existing product be made more cost-effective?
•Which changes would increase the utility of the existing product?
•What are the features of competing products in the market?
•What new products can be derived from the current product?
•How can the product be changed to provide additional value?
To produce innovations from an existing product, an engineer needs to be creative, thinking about what to do with the product, where to start, how to go about it.
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