Outstanding
Paper Award
Offer Shai1, Yoram Reich1, Armand Hatchuel2,
Eswaran Subrahmanian3
Creativity
theories and scientific discovery: a study of C-K Theory and Infused Design
The
17th International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED'09, Stanford, CA,
2009.
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1 School of Mechanical Engineering, The Iby and Aladar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
2 MinesParistech, Paris,
France.
3 Institute of
Complex Engineered Systems, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA; Faculty of Technology, Policy and
Management, The Technical University of Delft, Delft; CSTEP, Bangalore, India.
Abstract
Creativity
is central to human activity and is a powerful force in personal and
organizational success. Approaches to supporting creativity are diverse and numerous.
The only way to understand the diversity and utility of these methods is
through their careful analysis. This paper demonstrates the benefit of
conducting analyses of methods with the aid of a theory. As a first step, we
use Infused Design (ID) method to generate new concepts and methods in the
classic discipline of statics, in addition to its
prior use in the generation of a number of creative designs. The use of the
ID method in the creative scientific discovery process is modeled with C-K
design theory, leading to better understanding of ID and C-K. The exercise in
this paper illustrates how the synthesis of a theory, a framework and methods
that support discovery and design is useful in modeling and evaluation of
creativity methods. Several topics for future research are described in the
discussion.
This
work was partially supported by the Design theory and methods for innovation
Chair of Mines ParisTech and by a Visiting
Professorship Grant from the Faculty of Technology Policy and Management at
the Technical University of Delft.
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