How to Educate Students with the Ability of

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), Xi’an Jiaotong University Industrial Innovation Center (IIC), Shanghai Jiaotong University ybxie@mail. xjtu. edu. cn 2002. 10. 24. Supported by NSFC in a Major Project (No. 59990470)

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: 1. Can engineering education (EE) teach or train young people, future engineers or scientists, with the ability of innovation and creation? 2. Is the situation of EE in universities today good enough for such teaching and training? 3. How can we do better?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

Relation between design and knowledge

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.

Reasons

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.

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.

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.

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 sociotechnical 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.

Conclusions 1. Under the global competitive condition the courses in EE should be organized to ask students thinking what’s 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.

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.

Thank you for your attention!