The creative process in engineering – Teaching innovation to engineering students

This chapter reports on 3 pedagogical experiments related to training engineering students to innovation. After briefly introducing epistemological and business foundations, basic methodological blocks of innovation engineering are reviewed. Observations reported in Study 1 suggest that a constructivist process with a strong focus on user needs and a weak focus on technical constraints may increase student’s creativity. These recommendations are tested in Study 2, which highlights a new set of innovation drivers (e.g., mentorship, group composition) and some limitations in the implementation of user studies. To overcome them, an original Need-seeker method is presented and evaluated in Study 3. The 3 experiments result in a set of insights on engineers’ creative process and on innovation training for students.