Review of supporting and refuting evidence for Innovation Engineering practices

Ping Du,Chris Miller,Paul Gormley,Erin Macdonald

doi:10.1017/dsj.2015.5

Abstract

Innovation Engineering (IE) is an educational training program that presents tools and advice on product innovation in three main categories: Create, idea generation; Communicate, communicating ideas; and Commercialize, selecting ideas to invest in further. The concepts taught in IE include common suggestions for early-stage product innovation. This paper addresses a challenge of implementing the IE program, specifically that it does not provide peer-reviewed sources or adequate data to substantiate its approach. This lack of substantiation limits effective implementation at companies. This paper also takes a step in examining IE’s claims that it is ‘a new science’ and a ‘new field of academic study’, a topic motivated by the Design Science Journal’s aim to serve as the archival venue of science-based design knowledge across multiple disciplines. This paper provides a compilation of academic literature that has tested the tools and advice espoused by IE. Almost all included papers contain test-versus-control experimental evidence. A mix of supporting and refuting evidence was found. Overall, the work provides a useful compilation of evidence-of-effectiveness related to common innovation and design practices that spans different design stages and is applicable for multiple disciplines and industries. This evidence comes from a variety of sources, including design, engineering education, psychology, marketing, and management. The work can also serve as an approach to evaluate overarching approaches to design in general, specifically, testing the foundations by vetting related test-versus-control experimental studies.

Highlights

Innovation is widely accepted as a major force of growth in national economies (Kleinknecht 1996; Brouwer 1997; Klomp & Leeuwen 1999; Rosenberg 2004; Wong, Ho & Autio 2005; Cohen 2012), and the current president of the United States speaks that ‘[t]he first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation’ (WhiteHousend n.d.)
The production of technological innovations has historically led to economic prosperity, and a new economic theory known as Innovation Economics has emerged (Atkinson & Ezell 2012)
In line with the aims of Design Science, we review literature from a variety of disciplines, including design, engineering education, psychology, marketing, and management

Summary

Introduction

Innovation is widely accepted as a major force of growth in national economies (Kleinknecht 1996; Brouwer 1997; Klomp & Leeuwen 1999; Rosenberg 2004; Wong, Ho & Autio 2005; Cohen 2012), and the current president of the United States speaks that ‘[t]he first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation’ (WhiteHousend n.d.). The production of technological innovations has historically led to economic prosperity, and a new economic theory known as Innovation Economics has emerged (Atkinson & Ezell 2012). We view innovation as offering meaningful uniqueness to facilitate economic growth Wessner 2013), Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 54.88.250.19, on 08 Nov 2021 at 12:16:59, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. In design and engineering, new products or technologies require customers to see them as important enough to purchase and adopt

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Conclusion