Creativity Of Engineers And Its Place In R&D

There are different kinds of engineering teams: research, early development, mature product development, sustain and so on and each kind requires a different type of innovation and creativity of the team members as well as their experience level. In as much that the experience level of the team members usually fits the immediate needs of the project, quite often there are gaps between the required creativity level and the existing level – either too adventurous or too conservative. I have always wondered how these two professional characteristics, that are a part of the skill-set of an engineer, get different degrees of attention when it comes to the right person-to-role fit and this said with a big hint towards all the recruitment personnel and managers out there who read this post.

An important disclaimer: unlike my other posts this post is not based on any experimental data or professional literature primarily because I could not find any practical data. Thus this post is solely based on my personal observation and experience. BTW, the lack of literature on this subject is as a result of the difficulty to quantify creativity. I have found academic attempts to create metrics to quantify professional creativity however none has proven to be relevant beyond the laboratory to the industry world. There is also the question which one is more creative? The person who finds a solution form within the box or the person who finds a solution out of thin air? Currently, quantification of these two different kinds of creativity is challenging.

What is Creativity

Merriam-Webster defines creativity as follows:

the quality of being creative

Thank you so much . So I went forward to creative and found:

1: marked by the ability or power to create: given to creating
2: having the quality of something created rather than imitated: imaginative

But even that seemed a bit cold and aloof to me, so I gave OpenAI’s ChatGPT3.5 a chance to write me a paragraph about creativity:

“
Creativity is the boundless spark that ignites innovation and expression in human endeavors. It transcends boundaries, inviting individuals to explore the realms of imagination and originality. At its core, creativity is the fusion of insight and imagination, weaving together threads of thought to craft something novel and meaningful. It thrives in the depths of human consciousness, unearthing hidden connections, and breathing life into ideas previously unseen. Whether expressed through art, science, literature, or everyday problem-solving, creativity is a force that propels humanity forward, challenging perceptions, and shaping the landscape of our collective experience. It is the driving force behind progress, enabling individuals to transform vision into reality, and reimagine the world anew.
“

Beautiful! Now that’s much more like it! Amazing, as ironic as it may sound, the way an AI engine describes “the depths of human consciousness” . BTW, I am sure that the people who invented chemical weapons were very creative at their jobs but they did not however propel humanity forward. So not everything is indeed accurate with this definition but for our purposes it’s good enough.

A little confession, I gave ChatGPT3.5 more than one opportunity to write me the above definition but the first attempt was by far the best (the rest had some complete nonsense sentences inside), so I kept only this one for this post.

So, we have established what creativity is. Let’s fine-tune the needs of creativity in a multi-disciplinary project.

Different Roles Require Different Creativity Types

Without knowing much about accounting, I am positive that being an accountant requires a certain level of creativity which differs from the type of creativity you would require from a musician or a painter. We will not cover each role in a multi-disciplinary project as there are too many of them and usually the overall creativity during a project is measured by the collective creativity of the team and not a single individual. However, the same team when dealing with different stages of the project will require different creativity types. Note that I will not use the terms “more creative” or “less creative”, but only the realms in which we require the innovative thinking.

Early Stages, Ideas and Concept

This is the place for all those dreamers and free spirits out there. The ones who do not let anything stop their thinking but obviously up to the point of professionalism. For example, if your team came up with an idea that requires an electron to travel faster than the speed of light, question their technical knowledge before going forward. I have noticed that usually the ones who are free spirits outside of work are the ones that also do not let anyone or anything limit their thinking inside the office either – look for the extremists here: sky-divers, heavy surfers, scuba-divers, extreme hikers, motor-speed racers and so on.

Design

First, by design I refer to the stage where the concept was already chosen in the development process either on paper or by some prototyping process. In a perfect world that would be the case but very often we have to also treat the design stage with concepts and ideas such that the innovative and creativity needs for this stage may be a bit mixed with the previous section.
When approaching system design, we must be knowledgeable of technologies out there that may be integrated into our system. The innovative types would be the ones who know how to connect dots with lines that do not exist yet. For example, taking wired headphones and wireless tech and combining them. In most cases the creativity type people that fit the concept stages would also be a good fit in the design phase.

Development

Creativity in these stages means the ability to find shortcuts between existing dots and paths and the ability to solve problems as they crop-up within the project’s timeline (which usually gets postponed), budget (which usually is not met) and resources (which usually do not exist).

The development process is where we may start losing the free thinkers. Not necessarily because they do not fit but because it would probably not be their cup of tea and eventually would cause frustration to everyone involved.

Preparation for Manufacturing

The final stages of development where we transfer from development to production are very challenging processes. The team is required to pave a way that would lead to a measurable and repetitive process that would hold the production of the product for the many years to come. The innovative character required is very close to that of the development where we have to find different ways to connect the dots with known paths. It also requires a very perceptive ability of troubleshooting which requires out-of-the-box thinking. Here is where we part ways with all the ones who cannot think inside specified boundaries and start setting the exact boundaries of where and how to be innovative.

Manufacturing & Production

Manufacturing stage requires a very specific type of creativity. It is the kind where we need to know how to operate within the clear boundaries set for us for production in order to, on the one hand, increase yield or to lower costs while on the other hand still have the out-of-the-box-thinking ability in order to troubleshoot and identify production issues. I have noticed that the most innovative ideas in these stages come from the elders, that is, those who are already 15+ years in the company or industry.

Sustain (Product is in the Client’s Place)

You would think that the innovative character for sustain would be similar to the manufacturing and production but I have noticed that they differ. With sustain the environment is already outside of our factory and as such the creativity needed is the one to connect all the dots as opposed to find shortcuts between two different dots at a time. It is an holistic view closer to the design abilities than the production abilities.

One very crucial misplacement of personnel in the R&D team often happens in on-going projects. The team that has successfully taken the project from the concept level to a first prototype stage usually does not have the same drive to continue forward with the project to the manufacturing and sustain stages. A common mistake is to have that same team continue within the same project since they know the product best as they have dealt with it so far. Indeed, involve them because they are the experts but let a different team with a different skill-set to lead the activity and take it forward. It saves employee and management frustration.
This also applies to a successful manufacturing team that now goes to design the next generation of a product or any big transitions in the product life cycle.

Small Company or Startup

In small startups, where everything has to move fast and change even faster, the creativity needed from all the team is a combination between the free-thinkers and the ones who can find solutions within existing boxes. This combination is required due to the nature of small companies work since, on the one hand, they usually deal with something that was done only by a few and not really common knowledge (hence free-thinkers) and on the other hand, because of the need to deliver fast the need to be somewhat close to the existing abilities when coming up with solutions is paramount.

Mentorship

Yes, I know it is not a process or phase in any sense but it has to be squeezed in this list. Mentorship in a way is like a teacher in high-school. When the teacher’s basic character flows with the class that’s great. But a great teacher re-invents himself with every class to make his students the best there are. On the job mentorship is no different. It requires soft skill creativity of the mentor to see what drives his/her trainee while passing on more useful information to the trainee in their joint work together. The most important bit to remember here is that mentors that are not blessed with this kind of creativity or soft skills will only occasionally be good mentors. Most of the time it would be a struggle between the mentor and the trainee or the mentor’s boss.

The Use of Templates

Many engineering departments use templates: templates for documents, templates for development processes, templates for experiments and so on. The use of a template has its merits: every process in the company that is covered by a dedicated template will be executed in the same manner each time (hopefully) and if we’ve covered all the paperwork properly it will be very easy to find all the required information we need. A well devised template will also include sections and topics that will help the engineers cover everything required for that project phase.

However, and this is a very big however, templates can be a creativity killer. When incorrectly used, templates may limit the thought of the engineer only to the sections and processes that are covered in the template. When taken literally, you may end up only with nothing more than whatever the person who has written the template thought of.

To share a personal experience, I once had to get a requirement section inserted into a product requirement document (PRD) only to get a response from the product manager of “How can I insert this clause in the requirements? It’s not in the template!”. In this specific case it took a lot of pain and effort to “break” the template to our needs.

Templates are there to help us, to guide us, but certainly not to limit us. They are the tools, the means to an end, but not the goal. Keep this in mind when the templates are not an exact fit to your needs or outdated to the development processes taken in your project or product.

Methods to Identify the Creativity Type and Level of an Engineer

The million-dollar question is how to identify who is in front of us?
We will divide the answer into two phases: during work and in recruitment.
During work is an easy answer. After enough time in the industry, we recognize a creative and innovative engineer when we see one. Regarding the type of creativity, well if every now and then this particular engineer comes into your office and suggest NASA like ideas, he/she is probably the dreamer type. On the other hand if the same person comes up with a complicated solution that is completely down to earth and in sync with the production process you already have it also gives you an idea what kind of an engineer you have in front of you. BTW, a good method is also to talk to the engineer so as to identify where his desires and strengths are.

Connecting the dots to faraway technical subjects may indicate creativity during interview

The more challenging task is to identify the level and type of creativity during interviews in a recruitment process. First of all, when an engineer says he/she is not creative in some areas, that’s usually the case. The problem is when the engineer does not say anything on the subject. In my experience solving riddles and puzzles are an acquired skill and unfortunately do not predict anything. However, during a technical interview try to lead the technical subjects to a faraway subject and see how the potential engineer connects the dots. In addition, try to look for “light bulbs” during the interview where the potential engineer suddenly realizes something that happened in a previous part of the interview. Ask also about the person’s hobbies, in the search for the free spirits. Obviously, none of this is an exact science, so your intuition will probably bear the heaviest weight…

That’s it for now. There are exceptions for each and every scenario that I’ve discussed in this post however I do believe this post covers the majority of cases. When an engineer is gifted with high creativity it is really important, for everyone’s benefit, to have a good fit between the engineer’s creativity type and the role he plays in the company.
I hope I’ve given you readers, managers and team leaders in particular, something to think about before your next recruitment or personnel assignment in your team.