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Information extracted from patents as creative stimuli for product innovation
Parvin, Mehdi; Cascini, Gaetano; Becattini, Niccolo
Type:
Year:
2017
Editor:
Anja Maier, Stanko Škec, Harrison Kim, Michael Kokkolaras, Josef Oehmen, Georges Fadel, Filippo Salustri, Mike Van der Loos
Author:
Series:
ICED
Institution:
Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Section:
Design Information and Knowledge
Page(s):
297-306
ISBN:
978-1-904670-94-0
ISSN:
2220-4342
Abstract:
This paper investigates the impact of information extracted from patents on the creative performance of R&D engineers involved in new product design tasks. The creative stimuli originated by domain specific patent sources are proposed in the form of problem-solutions maps possibly enriched with TRIZ contradiction models related to the challenges addressed by the patents. The effectiveness of this kind of creative stimuli has been checked with a two-phase experiment that involved 56 professional engineers as testers subdivided into design teams of 2 people each. The teams were initially asked to brainstorm and generate innovative ideas in the field of devices for walking support (walkers). The 28 teams were, then, exposed to 4 different treatments (7 teams each): simple brainstorming as control group, problem-solution maps with and without related TRIZ contradiction models, patent-text used as far-field sources of analogy. The results of the experiment show that the problem-solution maps alone enhance variety of generated solutions, while enriched by the TRIZ contradiction models have a higher impact on novelty despite with a smaller variety.
Keywords:
