Using descriptions of biological phenomena for idea generation

Mak, T. W.; Shu, L. H.

doi:10.1007/s00163-007-0041-y

Cited by 95 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Typically, these have contributed with large sample sizes and a rigorous scientific approach. However, many of these studies use only hypothetical problems, studying ideas from nonprofessional engineers or designers (Massetti 1996;Benami and Jin 2002;Nijstad et al 2002;Kristensson and Norlander 2003;Helquist et al 2007;Perttula and Sipila 2007;Mak and Shu 2008) with few exceptions (Kim et al 2005;Napier and Nilsson 2006) and thus show "little similarity [to] design concept generation in the real world" (Shah and Vargas-Hernandez 2003). Little empirical work has been conducted using professional designers working on actual design tasks within industry.…”

Section: Assessing Creative Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, few have suggested mechanisms showing how these different stimuli are used to prompt new ideas. Mak and Shu (2008) have suggested that there are four categories of mechanism for idea generation using biological stimuli: literal implementation, biological transfer, analogy and anomaly. While these categories provide distinction between the types of mechanism, a framework for describing the differences is not shown.…”

Section: The Nature Of Creative Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

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The use of creative stimuli at early stages of industrial product innovation

2010

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Creative ideas are essential to original concept generation and ultimately innovation. But where and when do these vital creative ideas occur during product innovation and more importantly how can they be influenced? The following paper describes an industrially-based study of several innovation projects following the actual processes of professional designers. Some ideas from the early brainstorm can be traced all the way through to concepts that are selected at the company's stage gate. Those early ideas are marked as 'appropriate' which provides an objective evaluation of the influence of any prescribed creative stimuli being used during the brainstorm sessions in relation to the output of the innovation process. The results showed that the frequency of idea production remained roughly constant during the first 30 minutes but steadily reduced after this period.However, the number of 'appropriate' ideas decreased rapidly, where 75% of the appropriate ideas in the first 30minutes had been expressed after just 15minutes. By introducing various forms of stimuli to the groups, the frequency of idea generation was maintained and in many cases increased. The stimuli were also shown to help generate more appropriate ideas which were included within concepts proposed at the stage-gate.

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Section: Assessing Creative Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Nature Of Creative Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

The use of creative stimuli at early stages of industrial product innovation

2010

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“…Much of the literature on biologically inspired design describes the technical details of cases of biologically inspired design (e.g., [19,37]). However, there also is small but growing body of literature on cognitive studies of biologically inspired design (e.g., [23,31,33]). Our work as described in this paper seeks to add to this growing understanding of the cognitive basis of biologically inspired design.…”

Section: Studying Biologically Insipired Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature of creative analogies in biologically inspired innovative design

Vattam

Helms

Goel

2009

Proceedings of the Seventh ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition

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Analogy is a fundamental process of creativity. Biologically inspired design by definition entails crossdomain analogies, and in practice has led to many innovative designs. Thus, biological inspired design is an ideal domain for studying creative analogies. In this paper, we describe an intricate episode of biologically inspired design that unfolded over an extended period of time. We then analyze the episode in terms of Why, What, How and When questions of analogy. This analysis provides a content theory of creative analogies in biologically inspired design.

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“…Previous research found similar fixation when students were asked to map relevant strategies from biological descriptions to design solutions [11].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…In our experience, many engineering students have difficulty identifying and applying possible analogies from biology, but instead fixate on irrelevant features in the descriptions of biological phenomena [11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%