Improvisational Design of Engineering Alternatives (IDEA)

Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Associate Professor Pete Ludovice presents the Practitioners’ Leading Edge Lecture Series, which highlights innovative thinkers in higher education. Held in conjunction with the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL), the program focuses on real-life experiences about new ideas that can inspire teachers to experiment with innovations.

An RSVP is requested for this event: c21u.gatech.edu/practitioners.

Abstract

As commodity industries move offshore, the U.S. economy becomes more
 dependent on its underlying innovation engine. This underscores the 
importance of improving technical innovation. While engineers are
 effective at organizing the design variable conflicts that require
 creative designs, they are not very effective at the creative thinking 
required to discover these novel designs. Humorous improvisation has been
 used effectively to produce the divergent thinking effective in creating
 novel ideas in non-technical areas. However, improvisation has not proven
 effective in producing novel technical designs. We have developed a new
 method for applying improvisation to improve technical innovation that
 addresses the inherent differences in the shape of technical and
 non-technical idea space. This method requires a convergent and emergent
 step, in addition to the divergent step inherent in humorous improvisation
 to be effective in technical innovation. This method has produced
 innovative technical designs in various workshops, and these results will
 be discussed, as well as how such a method may be integrated into
 engineering research and engineering education.