Towards radical innovation: Mathematical modelling as a creativity technique in chemical mixing process
Khademi, Behrooz (2017)
Diplomityö
Khademi, Behrooz
2017
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe201705226717
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe201705226717
Tiivistelmä
Innovative solutions cause a boom in a company’s sales, and consequently a surge in its profits. These solutions stem from creative ideas that bring novelty to the firm’s activities. Recently, there has been a growing attention to the concepts of systematic creativity and creativity management in academia and industry. Mathematical modelling is a well-known tool for optimization purposes in many fields, but not as a technique for New Product Development (NPD) or new services and processes. The focus of this study is on the role of mathematical modelling in making breakthroughs in chemical mixing process. Mathematical models and simulations used for finding new ideas in chemical mixing process. The selected idea was proved to be a technologically and economically feasible alternative for replacement in chemical mixing process. It was found out that there were similarities between the mathematical modelling approach for creativity process in this study and Helmholtz-Poincare-Getzels (HPG), a famous creativity process model. The former was more dynamic, less likely to result in accidental creative ideas and more iterative. Thanks to the possibility of simulating the models, mathematical modelling could give visual illustrations of the model and consequently increase the likeliness of finding creative ideas. The ability to simplify the problem by mathematical models gave a higher chance and flexibility to find creative solutions including the applications for other tasks or industries. To exploit the most out of mathematical modelling in Research and Development departments towards radical innovation, managers should require higher level of math’s and simulation skills from the current and prospective employees. Innovation-wise, Finland is a stunning country and a suitable environment at both micro and macro levels. In order to increase the popularity of systematic creativity (mathematical modelling technique in particular) in Finland, it is suggested that more budget should be assigned to universities for including creativity-related courses such as mathematical modelling and TRIZ in their curricular to increase the productivity in Finnish society. Joint creativity seminars for organizations proved to be a good strategy to change the direction of the employees’ insight to problem solving. It is crucial to increase the motivation of management and employees as it pertains to creativity workshops.