Abstract
Engineering innovation concerns the development of both incrementally and radically new solutions to new problems arising from change. It is underpinned by an individual capacity for creativity. Over many hundreds of years, as our ability to respond to change with technological innovation has grown, so has the importance of the different dimensions of creativity, from a personal disposition to openness, to a capacity for deliberate creative ideation. As we move into the era of digital transformation, with new technologies increasingly able to replace humans in many tasks, it is soft skills—creativity in particular—that are growing in importance for engineering innovation.
This chapter explores the driver of [engineering] innovation—change—and how this has increasingly redirected the work of engineers to problem solving. In parallel with this shift is the renewed emphasis on what skills and abilities are required to be a successful engineering innovator. There is now a growing recognition that engineers must be, first and foremost, equipped with a capability focus (CF) driven by creativity and other soft skills, complimented by traditional technology fluency (TF). This may be almost a reversal of the traditional focus on engineering development and is necessary to keep pace with the changes brought by digital transformation.
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Notes
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The Coca-Cola company, for example, uses an innovation model that advocates for 70% of their effort focused on replication—what they call the “Now.”
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Coca-Cola advocates for 20% of their effort on this, calling it the “Next.”
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Coca-Cola devotes 10% of their effort to this form of innovation, referring to the “New.”
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Generally accepted as occurring between approximately 1760 and 1840.
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- 6.
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Cropley, D.H., Singh, C. (2023). Engineering Innovation: The Impact of Digital Transformation. In: Preiss, D.D., Singer, M., Kaufman, J.C. (eds) Creativity, Innovation, and Change Across Cultures. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28206-5_6
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