Title: Formal innovation criteria

Authors: Kenneth A. Shelton, Tomasz Arciszewski

Addresses: Volgenau School of Information Technology and Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA. ' Department of Civil, Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering, Volgenau School of Information Technology and Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

Abstract: The paper proposes formal criteria and a visualisation concept to measure relative innovation in a population of design concepts. The main criterion is called the |Configuration Distance|, and is the summation of two sub-criteria called the |Component Distance| and |Value Distance|. The visualisation concept is called the |Design Solution Topography|, which allows visualisation of a population of design concepts in terms of their performance, Component and Value Distances. When incorporated into a conceptual designing method, being developed by the first author, the criteria will enable designers to evaluate innovation in selected designs that also satisfy the desired performance objectives at a minimum threshold or greater.

Keywords: innovation evaluation; innovative conceptual design; evolutionary design; formal criteria; visualisation; design concepts.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2007.015694

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2007 Vol.30 No.1/2, pp.21 - 32

Published online: 09 Nov 2007 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article