6 Course Module 1a: Engineering Ingenuity

Objective: Teach students techniques to stimulate their brain to explore, determine, and design significant solutions to solve problems and improve lives.

Course Activity:

• Introduce students to idea-mining methods (focused research and information collection) for gathering stimulus relevant to a particular problem or opportunity.
• Provide tools and train students how to use system thinking processes for a multitude of different thinking styles and problem-solving approaches.
• Learn and use several different research techniques to support focused discoveries that stimulate unexpected insight to solve challenges.
• Develop and improve confidence to identify and champion ideas that are meaningful (solving a problem) and unique (the first, the original, new, etc…)

Idea Engineering

This aspect of the program focuses on the application of tools and systems to stimulate the brain. This is accomplished by using processes and tools to engineer divergent thoughts reflective of the purpose to solve a challenge or inspire an opportunity.

This stage of the innovation program establishes the foundation for students to understand how to generate relevant solutions in any field. The exercises in the course modules help students learn and retain insights related to the resilient practice of crafting ideas that become meaningfully unique concepts.

Example of Assignment: Word Association (14)

Innovation, in its basic form, is an association of ideas and insights mashed together into a concept.

Mission: We need ideas for a new Airbnb experience.

Exclusions: We are not interested in ideas for online internet-based activity.

Directions:

Use the Stimulus Statement Word column for inspiration. Then Free Associate Words respective of the previous column by jotting down whatever data or phrases you find relevant to the original stimulus word.

Next, notice attributes relevant to the words or phrases in the Free Associate Words column and find correlations to mash the associations together to describe an idea about a fun Airbnb experience.

At this stage do not worry about the feasibility of the ideas. Just push your mind to be unique.