Engineering innovation
Innovation creates competitive advantage. So how do you create, capture and leverage technical innovation? The first step is identifying the right problem statement.
The first, and often the most challenging, part of solving engineering problems is identifying the fundamental challenges that actually need to be addressed in a solution neutral manner that doesn’t prejudge the outcome.
Only by asking the right questions in the right ways can we develop the best problem statements against which to apply our natural creativity skills and our structured techniques.
We ask the relevant questions to identify the right problem statements
Structured Creativity Processes
You can get good ideas by throwing together the kind of creative, talented, diverse, highly qualified and experienced individuals that we employ and nurture at DCA and asking them to solve a problem. But to get great ideas you need to add a structured creativity process.
This is why we deploy a wide range of formal creative thinking techniques such as TRIZ, SCAMPER, De Bono’s ‘Random Entry’ and many others to help us generate and refine world-class engineering solutions.
And it’s why we also focus on establishing the right attitudes and environments for creativity.
IP strategy and planning
Intellectual property is a fundamental element in the creation of commercial success for most of our clients. Our innovations and creative work have helped our clients with over 3,900 patent applications and more than 1,700 granted patents worldwide since 2000.
You can engage our experienced team to provide strategic thinking and day-to-day assistance with the management of intellectual property rights. This can range from long-term, high-level IP strategy development to individual project focused work. It can involve support for patent circumnavigation or help to explore patent landscapes.
Crucially our design teams can place the intellectual property needs of the project at the heart of their thinking from the very outset of planning the project, as well as during the creation of the product itself.
