How to Educate Students with the Ability of Innovation and Creation

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How to Educate Students with the Ability of
Innovation and Creation

• Xie, You-Bai
• Internet-Based Collaborative Research Center on
  Modern Design and Manufacturing of Ministry of
  Education of China (ICRCDM),
• Xian Jiaotong University
• Industrial Innovation Center (IIC),
• Shanghai Jiaotong University
• ybxie_at_mail.xjtu.edu.cn
• 2002.10.24.
• Supported by NSFC in a Major Project (No.
  59990470)

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Needs of Innovation and Creation

• Competition ? Controls almost every thing ?
  Innovation and Creation ? Key of the existence
  and development of companies, teams or individual
  person.
• Three questions
• Can engineering education (EE) teach or train
  young people, future engineers or scientists,
  with the ability of innovation and creation?
• Is the situation of EE in universities today good
  enough for such teaching and training?
• How can we do better?

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Can EE give young people the ability of
innovation and creation?

• Arguments
• No, the ability of innovation and creation is
  defined by the inherent quality of each student,
  there is no general way of teaching and training.
• Yes, or EE should do better for the purpose.

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Three elements of the ability

1. Consciousness and courage on facing the risk in
   innovation and creation
2. Knowledge of the way of innovation and creation
3. Understanding the value of collaboration.

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Story in an Innovation Cup Contest

• Organizer Industrial Innovation Center, Shanghai
  Jiaotong University
• Members ABB, GM (Shanghai), Toshiba (China),
  UTC, Hair, Shanghai Electric Corp., YASKAWA,
  Fujitec, SAIC, etc.
• Innovation Cup Contest opening from one year
  before July, 2002
• Final competition before a group comprised of
  delegates from the members of IIC in a face to
  face examination with the candidates coming from
  many universities

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What is found in the Contest ?

• Most of the unanswerable questions happened are
• What is the level of technique used in innovation
  in comparison with existed products or design?
• Is the technique used an innovation?
• It implies that they deal their innovation as
  they do not know clearly the situation of outside
  world and cannot answer the question that what is
  new.

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Is our EE good enough?

• Two points were thought after the examination
• The first,
• Due to the long period closed situation of China,
  a popular accepted goal is to do every thing
  themselves or so-called filling the blank.
• Such a point affects EE in universities deeply
  even though the situation is absolutely changed
  today.
• If one makes every thing without innovation and
  creation you will definitely lose your
  competitive power and be defeated.

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Is our EE good enough?

• The second,
• Five steps in engineering innovation must be
  taken
• 1. Know the new requirements.
• 2. Know the gap between existed techniques
  and
• new requirements.
• 3. Develop new concepts to meet the gap
  through
• association based on existed knowledge.
• 4. Assess the new concepts, select the best
  and do
• detailed design.
• 5. Realize the developed prototype and check
  if it
• meets the new requirements.
• Is there any course in the standard curriculum
• dealing with such topics?

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Relation between design and knowledge
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A suggestion

• Once the new knowledge is applied in a new design
  it become existed knowledge in the next
  generation innovative design. Knowledge is a
  dynamic integration and in rapidly renewing.
• Much existed knowledge taught in universities
  will be no use in innovative design and engineers
  must have their other ways to acquire new
  knowledge.
• It is suggested to set up a new course in EE
  named Modern Design.
• It involves knowledge acquirement, knowledge
  integrating, knowledge utilization, and the
  modern viewpoints in design.

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Reasons
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Value of collaboration

• Reference 4 reported, analysts have estimate
  that manufacturing companies now outsource from
  40 to 70 of their product development
  activities to external suppliers, contract
  manufacturers, and contract design service
  companies.
• The main reason of applying a distributed
  resource mode is for knowledge rapidly renewing
  rather than for a continuous 24 hours designing
  process.
• A kind of collaborative work mode named knowledge
  service via Internet is suggested.

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Living conditions for resource units

• 1. The resource units should keep themselves as
  the most advanced in the world. Therefore they
  must renew themselves frequently.
• 2. The resource units should keep themselves
  operating on the highest service quality and
  efficiency. Therefore they must serve for any
  user in the world instead of a company.
• 3. The owners and the operators of the resource
  units must have higher income to keep themselves
  with a highest initiative and activity on having
  point 1 and point 2.
• 4. There must be enough service requesters on the
  Internet.

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Characters of a design entity

• 1. It has a design target.
• 2. It does the design or part of the design.
• 3. It is responsible for the completion of the
  target and the success or failure of the design
  and then the product in later competition.

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Relation between knowledge resource structure
changing and EE

• Either in the structure of design entities or
  resource units educated and organized human, not
  computers, is on the top position of the
  structure since the collaboration is a very
  complex socio-technical activity. It is completed
  via negotiation to find a compromise between
  stakeholders with different perspectives rather
  than via computation in computers.
• EE in universities should focus its attention on
  the ability of knowledge acquirement, knowledge
  integration and knowledge utilization rather than
  simply knowledge transferring, even though in the
  fundamental disciplines.

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Conclusions

• 1. Under the global competitive condition the
  courses in EE should be organized to ask students
  thinking whats new and what new requirements it
  will satisfy at first in their innovation and
  creation activities.
• 2. Teaching and training students with the
  ability to realize their innovation and creation
  practically are important as well.

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Conclusions

• 3. Due to rapidly renewing knowledge integration
  EE in universities should focus its attention on
  the ability of knowledge acquirement, knowledge
  integration and knowledge utilization rather than
  simply knowledge transfer.
• 4. A course named Modern Design is suggested in
  EE in universities, which deals with the goals
  mentioned from point 1 to point 3.

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Thank you for your attention!