The Science of Innovation: Tools and Methods

创新和创造力一直是各种科学学科密集研究的重点，包括心理学、工程学、计算机科学和商学。这项工作揭示了人们表述问题、寻找潜在类比和评估可能性的方式的一些关键方面。通过这项研究获得的知识可能是有用的，因为大多数职场人士对自己的思维过程缺乏足够的了解，无法激励自己发挥创造力。对创新和创造力的研究可能会导致在实验室和工作场所促进可重复创新的方法和技术。美国国家科学基金会正在支持由德克萨斯大学IC2研究所主办的一个多学科研讨会，以探索创新工具的开发。本次研讨会将汇集认知科学家、工程师、计算机科学家、商业研究人员和企业界成员，提出可用于创新环境的特定工具。这些建议不仅是作为支持实验室和工作场所创新过程的可行方法，而且也是讨论新研究问题的基础，这些问题将扩大我们对创造过程的知识。对该讲习班的支持将使学生和初级研究人员能够参与来自不同学科的研究人员之间新合作的早期阶段，这些研究人员对创新和创造力有着共同的兴趣。

Innovation and creativity have been the focus of intensive study across a variety of scientific disciplines, including Psychology, Engineering, Computer Science, and Business. This work has revealed a number of key aspects about the way people formulate a problem, search for potential analogies, and evaluate possible. The knowledge gained by this research is potentially useful because most people in the workforce do not know enough about their own thought processes to spur themselves to be creative. Research on innovation and creativity may lead to methods and techniques that promote repeatable innovation in the the lab and the workplace. The National Science Foundation is supporting a multidisciplinary workshop hosted by the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas to explore the development of tools for innovation. This workshop will bring together cognitive scientists, engineers, computer scientists, business researchers, and members of the business community to propose specific tools that could be used in innovation settings. These proposals are intended not only as workable methods of supporting the processes of innovation in the lab and the workplace, but also as the basis of discussion for new research questions that will extend our knowledge of the creative process. Support of this workshop will enable students and junior investigators to participate in the earliest stages of new collaborations among researchers from different disciplines who share a common interest in innovation and creativity.