Bench Talk

If you’re like many people I know, inspiration rarely comes when you’re setting at your work desk, staring at a blank wall, or aimlessly exploring cyberspace while looking at your smartphone. Here are some tips to feed your creativity, get un-stuck from mental blocks, and pursue your never-ending quest for ideas.

From sliced bread to rocket ships, people have shown their creative nature throughout history by designing new things. Not surprisingly, many of the greatest designs came about as the answer to a problem. Gravity got you down? The Wright brothers have a solution. Computers too big? Kilby and Noyce introduce the world to microchips (and Silicon Valley in the process). Want to do more with a peanut? George Washington Carver has around three hundred good ideas. But these guys are the stuff of legends. Do ordinary folk like you and I have the ability to think creatively too?

Throughout human history failure has been a bittersweet fact of life, and engineering is not exempt from this truth. Despite our best efforts (and sometimes, because of the lack thereof), engineering failures occur. The aforementioned examples are just some of the most highly publicized engineering disasters of the last 75 years. Sometimes, as we push the envelope in pursuit of success, things go horribly wrong. However, engineers should never use the reasons of those failures as an excuse. Instead, a failure should be viewed as a call to action, which brings with it the necessity to keep pursuing the root cause(s) of the failure. By doing this, we expand our knowledge and can reduce the likelihood of another disaster occurring in our future endeavors.