Open the ‘black box’ creativity and innovation: a study of activities in R&D departments. Some prospects for engineering education

ABSTRACT

Innovation is a key component to the success and longevity of companies. Our research opens the ‘black box’ of creativity and innovation in R&D teams. We argue that understanding the nature of R&D projects in terms of creativity/innovation, efficiency/inefficiency, is important for designing education policies and improving engineering curriculum. Our research addresses the inventive design process, a lesser known aspect of the innovation process, in 197 R&D departments of industrial sector companies in France. One fundamental issue facing companies is to evaluate processes and results of innovation. Results show that the evaluation of innovation is confined by a lack of methodology of inventive projects. We will be establishing the foundations of a formal ontology for inventive design projects and finally some recommendations for engineering education.

KEYWORDS:

• R&D
• creativity
• innovation
• inventiveness
• engineering education
• curriculum gap

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Charlyne Millet http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0243-3331

David Oget http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8539-0225

Denis Cavallucci http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1815-5601

Notes on contributors

Dr Charlyne Millet is currently researcher and teacher assistant in Sciences of Education at the University Institute of Technology, Social Career Department, Le Havre University (France). She conducted a postdoctoral research at the Design Engineering Laboratory, INSA, Graduate School for Engineers and Architects, Strasbourg (France). One of her research domain includes education and work activity (e.g. researchers and engineers).

Dr David Oget is currently associate professor in Sciences of Education at the INSA, Graduate School for Engineers and Architects (France), and researcher in the Design Engineering Laboratory. His research activities include, among others, engineering design education, engineering management and methodological tutoring in engineering schools.

Pr Denis Cavallucci is currently full professor at the INSA, Graduate School of for Engineers and Architects (France), and deputy director of the Design Engineering Laboratory. He started his teaching and research activities in design methods and theories in 1988. He is also co-founder and first president of TRIZ-France association, co-founder and past president of ETRIA (European TRIz Association).