Before a concept becomes a formal specification, an engineer needs frameworks for generating and shaping it, and that early-stage toolkit is what this level builds. It opens with TRIZ, the inventive problem solving method built from patterns found across hundreds of thousands of patents, and a parallel catalogue of mechanical principles that gives an engineer established solutions to draw from. It then moves into market pull versus technology push as two opposite starting points for a concept, the Jugaad principles of frugal engineering, and applied examples, an LED-based redesign and an induction-charged flashlight, that show ideation becoming a working prototype.
Systematic ideation for engineers enhances innovation and reduces redesign costs.
Engineers trained mainly in analysis often freeze at the blank page. This level gives them a repeatable process instead. It is built for engineers and product developers at the start of a new program, before requirements are locked, and for teams that keep reinventing solutions that already exist in the patent literature or in adjacent industries.
Manufacturers benefit when ideation happens systematically, since a wider and better structured set of early concepts reduces the chance of costly redesign later in the program.
The Concepts & Tools to Learn in this Course:
These are the bodies of knowledge that will be assessed in the test below:
TRIZ: the 40 inventive principles
Mechanical principles catalogue for design solutions
Market pull versus technology push
Opportunity identification techniques
Jugaad principles of frugal engineering
LED technology as a design enabler
Induction charging applied to product redesign
Curated reference sources for ideation research
Form follows function as an ideation constraint
Phase Gate entry criteria for a new concept
Stanford d.school five-stage design thinking process
The list below is a special selection of our original articles, tools and methodologies available on this site.
Tip: the big dot at the start of each title indicates if that post/article has already been read ( ● ), or not ( ○ ). Refresh the page if necessary.
Tip: the reading progress is recorded either in a cookie (if you are not logged in or no account created), or in your site profile. Use the later to be sure not to loose your progression.
As soon as you start a given article, your progress will be indicated on top of each page to help you finish and move on to the next.
Note: for this particular course, articles can be read in any order.
After you are familiar with the lectures above, so as having done your own readings, we recommend attending the Exam below.
The test consists of 20 questions in random order, out of many more, to insure novelty each time. Each completely correct answer gets you 10 points. You get a full correction at the end of the test.
If the course has different levels, the current test does not include questions of lower levels, making it … hardthat level!
radio-buttons: only 1 correct answer must be selected
check-boxes: 1 or several answers must be checked (with strict all-good-or-nothing grading logic)
Tip: mouse over “Hint” to get an advise for the response.
Only innovation.world members can see it below and attend it.
