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Creativity for scientists and engineers : a practical guide
Author
Title
Creativity for scientists and engineers : a practical guide / Dennis Sherwood.
ISBN
9780750349673
9780750349666
9780750349659
9780750349680
Publication
Bristol [England] (No.2 The Distillery, Glassfields, Avon Street, Bristol, BS2 0GR, UK) : IOP Publishing, [2022]
Physical Description
1 online resource : illustrations (some color).
Local Notes
Access is available to the Yale community.
Notes
"Version: 20221001"--Title page verso.
Access and use
Access restricted by licensing agreement.
Biographical / Historical Note
Dennis Sherwood is one of the UK's leading experts on creativity and innovation. For the last 20 years, Dennis has been running his own consulting firm, The Silver Bullet Machine Manufacturing Company Limited, working with organisations to generate great ideas, to evaluate them wisely, and to build a sustainable culture in which safe creativity and effective innovation flourish. In particular, much of the inspiration for this book derives from projects carried out with industrial scientists and engineers, as well as academic teams and Centres for Doctoral Training at universities across the UK.
Summary
All scientists and engineers are creative -- you wouldn't be a scientist or engineer if you weren't. But can you be even more creative? Do you know how to develop creativity in those who are less confident? And how to build a team culture in which creativity flourishes? If those questions spark interest, then this book is for you. Presenting pragmatic and powerful processes for generating ideas, and for distinguishing good ideas from weak ones, the book explores the fundamental first principles on which creativity is based, as well as the organisational factors that need to be addressed for creativity to happen. Filled with examples of creativity in science and engineering, and including a contributed chapter in which 13 contemporary scientists and engineers tell their own stories, this book is a practical 'how to' guide on how to have good ideas on demand, how to judge between good ideas and bad ones, and how to build a sustainable innovation culture. From gravitational waves to outreach, from safety on trains to how some cows in Kansas triggered an idea for noise reduction, the examples in this book are sure to stimulate individual and organisational creativity.
Variant and related titles
IOP ebooks.
Other formats
Also available in print.
Print version:
Format
Books / Online
Language
English
Added to Catalog
December 15, 2022
Series
[IOP release $release]
IOP ebooks. [2022 collection]
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
Audience
Researchers and advanced students in all scientific fields.
Contents
part I. Koestler's law of creativity. 1. What, precisely, is creativity?
1.1. Some dictionary definitions
1.2. My 'sound-bite' definition
just five words
1.3. Ideas as outcomes, ideas as questions
1.4. Invention and discovery
1.5. What's missing from the sound-bite?
1.6. What is 'new'?
1.7. It's difference that's important, not novelty...
1.8. ...and the best way to discover differences is to be observant
1.9. Value
2. Creativity in context
2.1. Creativity alone is not enough
2.2. A richer picture
2.3. Process 1
creativity
2.4. Process 2
evaluation
2.5. Processes 3 and 4
development and implementation
2.6. The target diagram and skills
3. The six domains of creativity
3.1. Creativity is not just about 'the better mousetrap'
3.2. Content
3.3. Process
3.4. Strategy
3.5. Structures
3.6. Relationships
3.7. You!
3.8. The importance of the organisational culture
4. Koestler's law
4.1. Arthur Koestler's definition of creativity
4.2. The 'eureka moment' myth
4.3. 'But I'm not a creative person'
4.4. Creativity is all about patterns
4.5. 'Bisociation' and 'thinking aside'
4.6. The more familiar the parts, the more striking the new whole
4.7. What Koestler's law does, and doesn't, do
4.8. The Koestler challenge
5. Some more examples of Koestler's law
5.1. Literature
5.2. Art
5.3. Chemistry
5.4. How chemistry made impressionist art happen...
5.5. ...and how physics has facilitated contemporary art
5.6. History, politics, philosophy, and economics
5.7. Newton's laws of motion and gravitation
5.8. A brief digression
coincidence, co-invention and the zeitgeist
5.9. The light bulb
5.10. Casa Batlló
5.11. The DC electric motor
5.12. The impossible building
5.13. Special relativity
5.14. The structure of DNA
5.15. DNA
a final word. part II. How to have great ideas, deliberately
6. The 'da Vinci problem'
6.1. Building on Koestler's Law
6.2. The helicopter that couldn't fly
6.3. The problem of the missing component
6.4. You might be a 'victim', now
6.5. Identify the missing component(s) as precisely as you can
6.6. Keep your eyes
and ears
open
6.7. Be patient
6.8. In conclusion
7. Emergence
why some patterns are better than others
7.1. Emergence
7.2. Same components, different patterns
7.3. Not too little, not too much
7.4. Patterns within patterns
7.5. Emergence is often subjective
7.6. An enriched definition of creativity
8. Knowledge, experience, learning, and unlearning
8.1. Where are the Koestler's law 'components'?
8.2. Donald Hebb's theory of learning
8.3. The learning trap
8.4. Unlearning
8.5. Why is unlearning so difficult?
8.6. Hegel, and genetics
8.7. A brief pause...
9. How to have great ideas 'on demand'
9.1. InnovAction!
9.2. Step 1 : Define the 'focus of attention'
9.3. Step 2 : Individually and in silence, write down everything you know about the agreed focus of attention
9.4. Step 3 : Share
9.5. Step 4 : Then choose one feature, and ask 'How might this be different?'
9.6. Step 5 : Let it be...
9.7. Step 6 : ...and then, when that discussion runs out of steam, choose another feature and repeat steps 4 and 5
9.8. The nine dots puzzle revisited
10. InnovAction! in action
10.1. Ideas for games based on chess
10.2. Some things we know about chess
10.3. Ideas, ideas, ideas...
10.4. It really is as simple as that!
10.5. The central step
step 4 : 'How might this be different?'
10.6. Different ways of being different
10.7. Some examples
11. Springboards and retro-fits
11.1. InnovAction! is not the only way to have idea 'on demand'
11.2. Some other springboards
11.3. Random words
a retrofit
11.4. Some other retro-fits
11.5. Springboards and retrofits
which to use?
12. Creativity workshops
12.1. Observation, curiosity and permission made real
12.2. The workshop themes
12.3. Who should participate?
12.4. How workshops are structured
12.5. The idea generation group briefs
12.6. Don't impose constraints on cost and resources
12.7. Creativity, not evaluation
12.8. Quantity, quantity, quantity
12.9. After the workshop
13. Creativity in science and engineering
13.1. What this chapter is about
13.2. Detecting gravitational waves
13.3. Building Nemo
13.4. Synthetic synapses
13.5. Biomimetic adhesives
13.6. The magic colouring sheet
13.7. Quantum entanglement, single-pixel cameras, and novel endoscopes
13.8. Keeping the UK's railways safe
13.9. The 'Medusa effect'
13.10. Mixing things up : ellipsometry and strong coupling
13.11. Reducing noise
13.12. How nanopatterns made it from a semiconductor facility to an artist's print room
13.13. Newton's rings and flat screens
13.14. Blue Plan-itª and Water ARCª
part III. How to evaluate ideas, wisely. 14. Evaluation in context
14.1. Why wise evaluation is important
14.2. A very bad idea indeed
14.3. Not all ideas are good ones...
14.4. ...and even good ideas can be fiercely opposed
14.5. How do you, and your organisation, evaluate ideas now?
15. How to evaluate ideas wisely
15.1. Features of a wise evaluation process
15.2. An ideal process for wise evaluation
15.3. The half-way house
15.4. Wise evaluation, Edward de Bono's 'hats', and the importance of language
15.5. 'Evaluation lite'
15.6. And so to development and implementation
part IV. Building an innovative culture. 16. What is 'culture'?
16.1. The Covid-19 vaccine miracle
16.2. Language
16.3. Observation, curiosity and permission revisited
16.4. The wider picture
'enablers' and 'motivators'
17. Enablers
17.1. Budgets
17.2. Funding
17.3. Managing development and implementation
17.4. The idea archive
17.5. Physical environment
17.6. Behaviours
18. Motivators
18.1. Reward and recognition
18.2. Performance measures
18.3. Training
18.4. The role of senior management
18.5. Embedding innovation in the day-job
18.6. So, what next?
19. Epilogue
20. Further reading.
Also listed under
Institute of Physics (Great Britain), publisher.
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