Now take a minute and reflect on this topic. What does creativity and Innovation mean to you? These are two common words randomly thrown around in virtually every industry these days and engineering is not an exception. Habitually, creativity and innovation are interchangeably used as creativity remains an indispensable building block for innovation. This then implies that innovation is the successful implementation of creativity. While creativity alone is the coming up with ideas. Innovation is crucial for to reap the benefit of creativity, one must achieve something with it.
It is therefore important to note that we cannot talk about creativity and Innovation without implementation which is about putting ideas to practice. And this follows three important stages;
- Idea selection
- Idea development
- Idea commercialization.
Having the understanding that the components of innovation is creativity and implementation, it now leaves us with the misunderstanding of what should be titled “Innovation”. We can agree that in today’s world, Innovation is a trendy and fashionable word for everything that use to be called new product or new development.
However, there exist four types of innovation and they are;
- Market niche Innovation is using an existing technology to open new market opportunities, the effect on technical systems and production being to strengthen and conserve established designs.
- Regular Innovation involves change that builds on established technical and production competence that is applied to existing customers and markets which entrenches existing skills and resources.
- Revolutionary Innovation disrupts and renders established technical and production competence obsolete, yet is applied to existing customers and markets.
- Architectural Innovation defines the basic configuration of product or process and establishes the technical as well as the marketing agendas that will guide subsequent development.
Now we can understand that creativity is about new ideas and strategies, while for its implementation to be truly Innovative, it must capture, skills and resources, product and process, customers and markets.
In this light, a creative and Innovative engineer is an engineer who thinks different and out of the box, is inspired to offer new solutions to his environment, society and humanity through acquisition of relevant skills and resources for manufacturing of new products and processes that meets the demands and aspiration of his customer base. As a result, opens up a new market of opportunities for others. Creativity and Innovation is foundational in the practice of engineering. It is the meaning of engineering. Here is the full meaning of engineering less I forget. Engineering is proffering solutions (creativity & Innovation) to human, societal and environmental challenges through the application of the principles of art and science.