The innovation pump: supporting creative processes in collaborative engineering

Abstract

The pervasive expansion of computers and internet has change the way people collaborate. Cybercollaboratories for collaborative engineering in form of web boards, blogs, e-mails, and instant messaging have become de facto mainstream communication channels. This paper reviews the new framework set after these technologies and presents how collaborative creativity and innovation can be modelled and supported using computational models. The paper continues presenting an innovation-support model based on the usage of genetic algorithms as computational metaphors of human innovation. The paper also discuses the results achieved using the proposed technologies in real-world collaborative creative processes.