SPIRIT OF APPLIED ENGINEERING CREATIVITY

Dr. M. Sathya Prasad, January 19, 2009

This small essay is my equally small attempt to share with you on what little I have learnt over the years about creativity from the standpoint of a corporate sector. The society at large seems to have understood the word creativity loosely as some artistic master-piece produced by the concentrated effort of a genius who might not be aware or might not even care that his/her creation would fetch a fortune at Christies, long after he/she is dead and gone! This could range from any of the chef-d'oeuvre of the miserable van Gogh to the Herculean efforts of the equally pitiable Edward Leedskalnin. From time to time, creativity could also take a form of societal necessity and thereby manifest as a product of collective efforts – such as the Great Pyramids at Giza. Either ways, whether individualistic or collective, there is no great expectation for such achievements to be recreated and very often these are hailed as one time wonders that deserve to be protected and replicated as souvenirs, if at all, but otherwise deemed to remain as one without a second.

Corporate world, however, demands a less impulsive and more objective definition of the word creativity. In this context, the word creativity loses its exotic content and is distilled to a practical point where engineering is applied ingeniously so that a particular product so created can have a mass appeal in terms of utility, apart from aesthetics and prestige. The conceived product is expected to – at the extreme – disrupt the manner in which a society functions, to a more down-to-earth level of providing an incremental betterment to the status quo.  Regardless, creativity from a commercial stand-point should produce products that can favorably affect the top and bottom line, can increase the brand equity and image of an organization or offer a better means to comply with existing or impending regulatory statutes.

Creativity, therefore, from a commercial view-point is a bounded problem inscribed within a large number of constraints as against artistic creativity, which is practically an unbounded problem. While art is based on perception and is exotic in nature that needs special care and regard considering its potential for becoming pricier over time, engineering creativity from a commercial stand-point is endeavored to be simple and hackneyed so that it can reach out to a large number of people through products designed for obsolescence. In both situations, however, the origin is one and the same – a fertile imagination and the urge to create something new and different. Only that, while in case of art there is no apparent utility value, an engineering project is intended to be of some practical use that leads to betterment of the society by improving the manner in which existential activities get done.

This essay is not about artistic creativity, but about engineering creativity and the metamorphosis of the same into a commercially viable project. The basis of any new concept germinates from an idea. Ideas can be organic in nature where a solution is identified for a latent problem or inorganic where one can incrementally develop, modify or upgrade a product. The former is more challenging and needs some amount of intense focus and maturity in viewing the world like the way it had never been before. The latter, however, could be a more systematic process where we would rely on a thorough understanding of the existing products and adopt some well known innovation techniques such as Triz etc. to come-up with better solutions. Organic creativity strives to offer new solutions while inorganic creativity endeavors to better existing ones.

Having understood so far, the next step would be the method to create something new. Take for instance the number of engineering magazines, newsletters, e-magazines, etc. at our disposal. These literatures contain by and large the essence of innovation taking place globally. The easiest start would be to go through these resources judiciously and try to mentally map the proposed solutions to the existing product at hand. For instance, the corrosion prevention techniques used in an off-shore rig can be looked at in our efforts to create chassis that are rust resistant. The finishing techniques used for surgical instruments could be looked at for, say, finishing our engine cylinder liners. Drawing technology parallels between engineering industries would be a fine start.

Several academic researchers would have, through years of work, achieved some degree of proficiency in specific areas. But given the confines of academia, the faculty might not have thought about or have the means to work on the scalability of the technology. The practical experience in industry and the specialty of academia can forge a good alliance. Similarly government labs can also offer technologies that are ripe for commercialization.

Whatever be the means, the R&D engineer in an industry must understand and accept that the onus of successfully commercializing a technology squarely rests on his/her frail shoulders and the auxiliary support mechanisms such as academia, government labs, etc, are facilitators at best. This would mean that the R&D engineer should have a 360 degree panoptic view of the project as against the sharp, albeit tunneled, vision of the facilitators. This could be frustrating since the latest of the technology could at best lead to an impractical gizmo with little commercial relevance. Exploring the unknown can sometime seem like an exercise in futility and might appear as elusive as the hunt for the Holy Grail. Therefore, persistence to succeed must be an uncompromising quality for a R&D engineer. As our former president Dr. Kalam aptly puts it, “We should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us”. For every successfully completed project, in retrospect, the means is sure to be as exciting as the end.

Gone are the days when a R&D engineer’s laurels merely rest on the intellectual property generated or news-making prototypes displayed. The responsibility of a R&D engineer has now been stretched further. The competitive nature of the business implies that the R&D engineer should be prepared to shoulder the entire responsibility for his/her idea – end-to-end. This would involve severe and substantial interactions with other groups such as product development, marketing, field service, etc. Since the priorities of these departments, understandably, are different from those of the R&D engineer, interface issues are bound to surface. The R&D engineer is expected to smoothly interact with various departments and is expected to, at every step, get the buy-in of various partners and stake holders. This would also mean that the R&D engineer should be gracious in sharing success with these partners instead of monopolizing triumphs. After all, the entire notion of an enterprise is one of collective success and a R&D engineer cannot afford to work in isolation in an internationally symbiotic corporate structure. So, a R&D engineer should not display the proverbial picture of a renegade loner, but on the contrary be a bubbling, dynamic person with excellent communication and interpersonal skills that would fortify his/her engineering abilities. He/she should be practical (not attempt cure for non-existing diseases), dynamic (have an all-round perspective), logical (not chase mirages or come in circles), frugal (get the most out of least), courageous (not be flippant and slippery in trying new things) and ever be ready to sacrifice non-value added accuracy for useful approximation (not lose sight of the forest for the trees). While a little bit of renegade nature can stimulate out-of-box thinking, the engineer should thereupon be able to quickly adapt to processes and protocols once the concept or idea has been crystallized so that there is disciplined execution. The spirit of innovation should always stay ahead – the spirit should lead and the letter should follow – but both should coexist nonetheless!

Unlike line functions where the results are crisp and can be projected to a reasonable degree of accuracy, R&D involves strenuous, tiring and at times frustrating attempts to sometimes inject even an innocently simple contraption into the market. Patience, persistence and determination should be the character of a R&D engineer to fight against the odds and create a success story rather than expecting a smooth fairy-tale end for projects. John Stuart Mill had wisely stated, “Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption “. This was also conveyed much earlier, though somewhat differently, by Arthur Schopenhauer, who accurately reflected, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident”. However, the silver lining is that even a single worth-while R&D project can change the nature of business. After all, who would have expected mankind to conquer the skies some one hundred and fifty years ago? Who would have expected nuclear fission a hundred years ago? Who would have expected mankind to lasso the moon? Incremental or disruptive, R&D is mandatory and sincere efforts over a period of time are bound to bear fruits and make us ready to face the Goliaths in the industry. R&D can never succeed unless action emanates from the soul. To quote Steve Jobs, “In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.” The spirit of R&D cannot be expressed better.

Finally remember, as Prof. Douglas Marriott once said, “To make one pill is pharmaceutical science – to make a million is engineering”.  The challenge of today’s R&D engineer would be to constantly enhance his/her utility value in a severely competitive scenario and at the same time be on up on knowledge obsolescence. An organization’s existence relies on its ability to ethically make money. R&D should be an indelible part of this success story and is obliged to prepare the organization directly and the society indirectly for a better tomorrow. So, cheer-up my dear R&D engineer, even if you might feel a bit forlorn today, it is time for you to – borrowing from Katha Upanishad –  ‘awake, arise and stop-not till your concept has been productionized’ – at least for the sake of a better tomorrow!