From Creative Ideas Generation to Real World Solutions: Analysis of the Initial Situation for Inventive Design

The first stages of the creative inventive process are devoted to choosing the problem and redefining its conditions. Most of the time, the original statement of the problem is imprecise, and occasionally even incorrect. This is why it is necessary to have mechanisms to help structure the creative thinking of a set of experts during their analysis of the problem, by providing them a knowledge-based framework. This article presents the first stages of IDM (Inventive Design Methodology). IDM is a set of methodological tools whose main interest is the evolution of technical systems. The methodology proposes a dialectical analysis of the technical system, which focuses on the past, present, and future state of the artifacts, and the most likely transitions between them. This analysis also identifies the influences (positive or negative) that the changes done to certain elements in the system may have on other elements of the system. The use of these methodological tools provides the needed structuring framework to the experts’ creative idea generation.