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Detterfelt, Jonas; Lovén, Eva; Lakemeond, Nicolette

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Creativity is an important characteristic of engineering design and one can learn much about creative methods for solving design problems in the literature. In reality, however, the spontaneous creativity of engineers also leads to new innovative ideas that are not directly applicable in current projects. Therefore, it is important that companies have the ability to extract and use these ideas to ensure long-term innovativeness. A suggestion system, the most classic of which is the suggestion box, is an approved general way that can enable this transfer of employee creativity; however, the literature provides little information about the applicability of suggestion systems in organizations for engineering design. This paper investigates the applicability and potential of suggestion systems to enable the critical transfer of creativity from engineering designers to the company. This research, performed as a case study, shows that a suggestion system, along with strong leadership, can help transfer creativity of the engineers to future products.

Keywords:

Suggestion system, creativity, idea extraction, idea landing, management