Innovation for Engineers: Developing Creative and Entrepreneurial Success

118 Pages·2018·2.699 MB·English

by  Mehran Mehregany (auth.)

Mehran Mehregany
Innovation
for
Engineers
Developing Creative and Entrepreneurial
Success
Innovation for Engineers
Mehran Mehregany
Innovation for Engineers
Developing Creative
and Entrepreneurial Success
Mehran Mehregany
Veale Professor of Wireless Health Innovation,
and Director of Case School of Engineering San Diego
San Diego, California, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-66528-3 ISBN 978-3-319-66529-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66529-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017955949
© Springer International Publishing AG 2018
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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my wife, Francesca, for her loving
support and encouragement.
Preface
In developing this book, I thought back to when I was graduating from college—
when I got my electrical engineering bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees. I
thought about what were the things I would have liked to have learned in school,
rather than over the years as I navigated my career. I pursued a career anchored in
academia because of love of learning and teaching. I learned about innovation and
entrepreneurship—and how career and life choices are interrelated—along the way.
This book presents what I would have liked to have learned in school, before
departing for the world of work. We engineers read a lot of “dry” textbooks; I have
tried to make the reading less dry when possible, including the use of informal lan-
guage at times. The presentation is a blend of theory and pragmatism based on my
own perspective in developing the content.
While the book is written for engineering students and professionals, the content
is similarly informative for those in other disciplines. It can be used in support of a
course or for self-study. Given the modest length of the book, it can be used in a
shorter course. On the other hand, longer courses provide an opportunity to elabo-
rate the content and help students integrate the learning in support of their own
individual interests and needs.
My own interest is to use this book in a two-semester course sequence, each
being three-credit hours. The first semester is to cover the entire book, while guiding
the students to formulate their own opportunity definitions. The students whose
opportunity definitions rank in the top half of those of the entire class will have the
opportunity to register for and complete the second semester course. Firstly, not all
opportunity definitions merit additional pursuit. Secondly, students need to experi-
ence the reality of competition.
The goal of the second course is for the students to complete and pitch business
plans for their defined opportunities. In doing so, they will put to work the concepts
presented in Chaps. 3, 4, and 5 systematically. A group of angel investors—to whom
the business plans will be pitched—decide if they want to invest in any of the plans,
including mentoring the students to move forward.
The development of this book was supported by a number of people. Marta
Moldvai of the Springer editorial team was instrumental in developing the table of
vii
viii Preface
contents. I enjoyed and appreciated the blend of her strong intellectual ability and
tactical skills. April Skrobiza did the initial literature search to set the stage for my
writing, working additionally with Alyss and Nadav Zohar on Chaps. 2 and 3.
I am very grateful to (1) Michael Branicky, Sc.D., PE, Dean, School of
Engineering, the University of Kansas; (2) Manijeh Reyhani, Ph.D., D.BA, Adjunct
Professor, Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Education, The University of Western
Australia; and (3) Enrique Saldivar, M.D., Ph.D., Director, Wireless Health Program,
Case School of Engineering San Diego, Case Western Reserve University. They
reviewed the book, taking time out of their busy schedules to help me develop a
better product. All three are involved with engineering, innovation, and entrepre-
neurship education and practice. Their input was invaluable in pointing out needs
for clarification and elaboration.
Finally, I would like to thank Case Western Reserve University for its support of
faculty book authorship.
San Diego, CA, USA Mehran Mehregany
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Evolution of the Author’s Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Chapter Overviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2 Innovation and Entrepreneurship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1 Pervasive Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 The Race for Relevance: Why All This Emphasis on Innovation? . . 6
2.2.1 What Is Innovation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2.2 Why All This Talk About Entrepreneurship? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2.3 What Are Entrepreneurship and Intrapreneurship? . . . . . . . . 10
2.3 Value Creation in the Twenty-First-Century Landscape . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3.1 How Companies Innovate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3.2 Building Innovation Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.4 Where to Play, How to Win . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.4.1 Where to Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.4.2 How to Win . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3 The Innovative Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.1 Growth Mindsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.1.1 The Individual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.1.2 The Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.2 How to Think Creatively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.2.1 The Four Stages of Creative Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.2.2 Other Models for Creative Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.2.3 Engineering Design and Creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.3 Biology of the Innovative Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.3.1 Divergent Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3.2 Convergent Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.3.3 Convergent and Divergent Interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.3.4 Novelty Seeking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.3.5 Connectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
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3.3.6 Ways to Enhance Creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.4 Psychology of the Innovative Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.4.1 Feeling Appreciated and Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.4.2 Sense of Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.4.3 Assurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.4.4 Availability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.4.5 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.4.6 Understanding Customer Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.4.7 Illusions of Intuitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4 Innovation Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.1 Design Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.2 Lateral Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4.3 Systems Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.4 Blue Ocean Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.5 Measuring Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.5.1 Example Organizations with Innovation Success . . . . . . . . . 67
4.5.2 Metrics of Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5 Identifying, Qualifying, and Financing Opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.1 Identifying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.1.1 The How . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
5.1.2 The Where . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.2 Q ualifying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.2.1 The What . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.2.2 The How . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
5.3 F inancing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.3.1 Investors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.3.2 Financing Rounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
5.4 Common Pitfalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.4.1 Identifying, Qualifying, and Financing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5.4.2 Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
5.5 C onclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
6 C onclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
6.1 T akeaways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
6.1.1 The Race for Relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
6.1.2 Where to Play, How to Win . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
6.1.3 Creative Thinking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
6.1.4 Innovation Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
6.1.5 Making Innovation Happen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
6.2 Closing Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
About the Author
Mehran  Mehregany is an innovator, researcher,

educator, and an entrepreneur. His interests are in sen-
sors, micro- and nanoelectromechanical systems, sili-
con carbide microsystems, wearables, wireless health,
and enterprise innovation models. He has made nota-
ble, innovative contributions in these areas.
He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engi-
neering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
1986 and 1990, respectively. He joined Case Western
Reserve University in 1990 as an assistant professor in
the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Department and was promoted to associate professor
with tenure in 1994 and full professor in 1997. He is
currently the founding director of Case School of Engineering San Diego, where he
developed and launched graduate programs in wireless health and wearable com-
puting in 2011 and 2014, respectively. He holds the Veale Professor of Wireless
Health Innovation endowed chair and previously held the Goodrich (2000–2015)
and the George S. Dively (1997–2000) endowed chairs. He has a secondary appoint-
ment in the Biomedical Engineering Department.
Previously, he was a consultant to the Robotic Systems Research Department at
AT&T Bell Laboratories (1986–1990), where he was a key contributor to ground-
breaking research in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). From November
2009 through August 2010 (taking a leave from Case), Mehregany was the founding
executive vice president of engineering, chief of engineering research, and the Gary
and Mary West Endowed Chair of Wireless Health Technology at the West Health
Institute (formerly West Wireless Health Institute). During this period, he formu-
lated the institute’s engineering program, recruited the initial talent, and launched
the initial research activities and product developments, including Sense4Baby,
which was brought to the market by AirStrip in 2015.
xi