Innovative thinking: Desired skills and related activities

Abstract

This paper describes a new interdisciplinary graduate course titled: "Innovative Thinking" aimed at enhancing students' innovation-related skills as well as students' reflections on the class. The main idea is to develop a student-centered environment that helps students to develop a can-do, proactive, innovative mindset; an environment that will light their spark of innovation, and provide them with resources to translate their ideas from paper to prototype. We have identified four major groups of relevant skills, namely, problem solving, "big picture", personal and social skills, and used several different activities to try to boost them. A variety of projects and challenges, and multi-sensory activities were synthesized to create an empirical, authentic, and multi-disciplinary experience. This effort is in line with our college longer term goal to infuse engineering curriculum with overarching traits of innovation, leadership, and entrepreneurship, so that at the end of their formal studies, the students will become "Innovation Ambassadors" who think and lead innovatively. In addition to my interactive presentations on topics like different types of innovation, and actual innovations of the last century, I used Stanford University Educators' Corner video clips on Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship. In addition, the students viewed and discussed innovation in video clips, from "Dead Poet Society", "Who Moved my Cheese", and "FISH." To achieve the goals of this course, i.e., enhancing innovative skills, the students were involved in multiple activities, among them: Team building and communication, for example, finding a way out of an imaginary electric maze, weekly team-based discussions of ideas, web submission of captions to the New Yorker Cartoon Competitions, and inventing games (show and tell) Problem solving activities, including solving multidisciplinary advanced brain teasers, and later discuss them in class Inventive projects, such as "warning system for those who do not wash hands before leaving a restroom"," system that calls the elevator when a familiar person is approaching", and "visual simulation of driving behavior." Projects had specific deadlines and towards the end of the semester working prototypes had to be presented Presentations on "Innovative Ideas", "Innovative People, Game or Movie", "Innovative Company", "Sustainable Innovation", "Important Innovation", "Innovation in Arts", "Innovation in Architecture", "Innovation in Science", "Innovation in Engineering/Technology", and "Innovation in Business/Marketing" Book reading followed by class discussions, e.g., Blink, by Malcom Gladwell, Freakonomics, by Levitt, et al, The art of Innovation, by Tom Kelley, and The Five Temptations of a CEO: A Leadership Fable, by Patrick M. Lencioni. Invited speakers on topics such as Innovation and the Enneagram. Pattern breaking assignments, e.g., Drive home without exceeding the speed limit. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2008.