Tag: Unleashing Engineering Creativity

Book Review: Unleashing Engineering Creativity

Can you do that?  Review a book that you wrote?  Hey, Gresh and I write the blog.  Why am I even asking?

The book is Unleashing Engineering Creativity, and it came about as the result of a course I teach on engineering creativity.   The cover photo you see above popped up on my Facebook feed yesterday (there’s old Zuckerberg, thinking of me again).  So I shared the picture, and somebody made a comment that they didn’t understand the photos.

Okay, here’s the deal.  Paul Mauser is widely credited as the guy who invented the bolt action rifle, and as he told the story, the idea came to him when he observed a simple gate latch (like you see on the book cover above). That led to a long line of Mauser and other bolt action rifles (but Mauser was the first).  The one in the photo above is a Modelo 1909 Argentino Mauser, arguably the best version ever of the famed Model 98 Mauser (I have one and it is phenomenally accurate).  The gate latch?  That came from Lowe’s.  I bought it to shoot the above photo.

You might think that engineers sit around in white lab coats and think deep thoughts when they need to invent something.   It actually doesn’t work that way.  No engineer worth a damn sits around very much, and when we have to invent things on demand, we’re usually not very good at it.  In most companies, engineers just spitball it.  You know, what we euphemistically call brainstorming (it’s no accident that the initials are so appropriate; it’s not a very effective way to come up with new designs).

The bad news is that we (as human beings) are at our most creative when we’re about 5 years old, and we lose much of our natural creativity (over 90%, according to the experts) by the time we finish high school.   More bad news is that our creativity continues to erode after that.  Bad news indeed, but the good news is that there are a  bunch of great techniques we can use to get our creativity back.

One such technique is called TRIZ.  It’s an acronym for a bunch of Russian words I can’t pronounce, but basically it means we define the problem we are trying to solve and then we look into other areas in other fields to see how they solved the problem.  Like Paul Mauser did when he invented the bolt action rifle.  TRIZ is a little more complicated that, but you get the idea.

Unleashing Engineering Creativity has 17 different approaches for improving creativity.   It’s an expensive book, but if you’re looking to make the next technological breakthrough, the book’s cost is trivial.  Like I always tell people: Don’t wait for the movie.  I suppose I could do a YouTube video on some of the concepts.  Maybe later.  That YooHoo review still needs doing.

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Creativity

Most of us think of ourselves as creative people. But we’re really not. In fact, some studies show that our creativity peaks when we are in kindergarten, and takes a steady slide south by the time we graduate from high school. I’d argue that it’s even worse for engineers, as most of our focus never gets beyond meeting minimum requirements at the lowest possible cost. It’s a concept that seems to be in force when we see the latest motorcycles from the major manufacturers, often with nothing newer than paint and decals.

I’m an engineer and I feel comfortable saying the above, and I’m not alone in that regard. Many of the engineering managers I’ve known feel their engineers are not particularly creative. So much so, in fact, that I was asked to develop a course on engineering creativity several years ago, and it’s one I’ve since taught in the US and overseas many times. And in order to do that, I wrote a book covering 16 preferred creativity tools…

Unleashing Engineering Creativity, with an interesting cover photo showing a simple gate latch and a Modelo 1909 Argentine Mauser. Paul Mauser, inventor of the bolt action rifle, got the idea for his new rifle by observing a simple gate latch. Adapting earlier design concepts to new applications involves a technique called TRIZ, developed by a scientist in the former Soviet Union.

Unleashing Engineering Creativity includes a collection of quotes I thought I’d share with you…

Everything that can be invented has been invented.

– Charles H. Duell, Director of US Patent Office, 1899

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?

– Harry M. Warner, Warner Bros Pictures, 1927

Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.

– Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, 1895

The horse is here today, but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.

– Michigan Savings president, advising against investing in Ford

Video won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.

– Daryl F. Zanuck, 20th Century Fox, commenting on television, 1946

What use could the company make of an electric toy?

– Western Union, when it turned down rights to the telephone, 1878

And my personal favorite, one I’ve heard many times in my life…

We’ve always done it this way…

– Unknown

All this begs the questions:

What’s the next big thing in motorcycle design?

Where it will come from?

Are other businesses or industries are doing things that might make a new motorcycle more fun?

There’s a creativity technique called lateral benchmarking, which involves looking outside your industry for new ideas. Southwest Airlines greatly reduced their turnaround times after studying how NASCAR pit crews worked.  Is there something a company not in the motorcycle business is doing that would work well in a new motorcycle?

Kano modeling is another creativity technique in which you identify and assess potential cool features not expressed by the customer, but once experienced by a potential customer cinch the sale.  I bought a Corvette in 2004 when I saw its Heads Up Display.

A 2004 Z06 Corvette Heads Up Display. I wasn’t looking for such a feature, but when I saw it, I knew I had to own that car!

I would have never imagined I needed such a thing, but I worked on the F-16 HUD back in the ’70s, and when I saw it in the Z06 I knew I had to have that car.  What’s out there that’s supercool and might be incorporated in the next cool motorcycle?

Hey, do you have any motorcycle ideas? Let us know about them, and we’ll toss them up here on the ExNotes blog for comment.

One of the pages on the ExhaustNotes.us site lists the books we’re written.  Surprisingly, since we’ve launched the site, Unleashing Engineering Creativity has enjoyed a nice sales spike. I guess there are a lot of engineers following ExNotes. That’s cool, and thanks very much, folks!

Let’s wrap this one up with two thoughts.   First, please add your email address to our subscribers list (it’s the widget in the top right corner of this page).   You’ll find out the instant we post a new blog, and we’ll never provide your email address to anyone else.  And second…what are your ideas on new features that might entice you to buy a new motorcycle?   Let us know!