By Alfred
EG1471 E25
Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr, the Associate Professor from Department of Mechanical
Engineering of the National University of Singapore gave a talk on “Creativity and Innovation” on 28 August 2009. The talk was about how a dream can lead to creativity which in turn developed into an innovation.
Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr started of by showing a video on the various inventions found in our daily life such as refrigerator. It was a video to show that many things were invented over the past centuries to help men solve their problem. With it he left the audience a question about what leads to inventions.
Another video on the inventions of the airplane by the Wrights brother was shown which answer the question the Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr asked earlier on and the answer was dream. He further explained that it was dream that leads to creativity because anything can happen in the dream. For creativity one needs to think out of the box, the dream is the best place for one to do so.
After a dream one will then continue to create the product. According to Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr this product will only become an invention when it is accepted by the general public if not it will always remain as a innovation. He gave the example of Apple’s ipod and Creative’s zen. To illustrate further he also showed various pictures of weird products such as a chin support stand that will allow passenger to sleep while standing on the train.
Lastly, due to the technical failure a video of importance to his talk (according to Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr) was not shown. He ended off with an encouragement for all to continue to dream and one day someone may come out with an brilliant inventions.
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ReplyDelete(Comment from Xijiao)
ReplyDeleteThe importance of dream had been emphasized in the lecture for many times and I also recognize the necessity of nurturing a generation of engineers with innovative spirit. However, I personally feel that perseverance is more valuable than dream.
It is not difficult to think about new ideas as all the science fictions are the strong evidence of writers’ dreams. People have the ability to dream but not all dreams come true. One of the reasons is that we are limited by our resources. Another prominent reason, I think, is that those who have ideas are not determined enough to put them into practice. Most dreamers never take actions or insist on what they have started to do. Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr also mentioned the struggle people went through when they tried to invent airplane. Many also know that Thomas Edison also had experienced thousands of failure before he succeeded in inventing the bulb. Getting new ideas may need only a few seconds but realizing them will need years of struggle.
Thus, I hope that the new generation of engineers should be mentally prepared for great challenges and the difficulties they will encounter when designing new things. In order to succeed, the spirit of perseverance must come in hand with innovation.
Comment from Qi Dan:
ReplyDeleteA nice entry which provides detailed information about the creativity and innovation talk!
I can still remember those pictures he showed us such as the chin supporter and the special designed umbrella. By showing those interesting designs, Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr tried to introduce us how to think differently and creavitively. Besides, he also let us compare and contrast the creativity and practicability of those designs. Altough design like "fully-protect" umbrella can not be popular due to limitations of portability, it indeed shows the designers' efforts to make people's life easier and easier. In this sense, having thouse "dreams" is really great. Anyway, every great invention was created by trial and error, right?
Hope that we can also make something cool in the future as engineers.
Cheers!