7 Course Module 1b: Engineering Ingenuity

Example of Assignment:

Mind Mapping for Innovation Development: A lateral thinking process using systems thinking with word associations to make diverse connections and develop solutions.

Mission: Create a new flashlight

Students are required to create a mind map to develop an idea and complete the template below.

• Start by drawing a circle in the middle of the page with the words “New Flashlight”.
• Create 4 ‘LEVEL 1’ branches from the center that are significant lines of thought. One of the branches should be “Power” and another branch should be “Use” or “Light”.
  • Other branches are whatever students want for their mind map.
• Each branch should have at least 4 ‘LEVEL 2” subbranches extending beyond the ‘LEVEL 1’ branch. Each subbranch should also have several ‘LEVEL 3+’ extensions. See picture of a mind map below.
• Pick words in the mind map, draw lines to connect the words, and mash the words together to find correlations to stimulate your mind to conceive a new meaningfully unique flashlight.

After creating a mind map, fill in the blanks below.

Be concise… no long sentences over 18 words. Write in 3rd person… do not use the word “I”. Choose a favorite idea from the mind map and go through the following six steps.