innovation in the future of engineering design

Innovation in the Future ofEngineering Design

JOSEPH F. COATES

ABSTRACT

The future of engineering design is discussed in terms of forces and factors presenting opportunities andlimiting factors. After some concept clarification on the meaning of innovation, there is a discussion of creativity,which moves on to the shifting relationship between science and engineering. The central concept of hierarchyof systems is developed, as well as discussion of drivers of invention and adoption. New tools for engineeringdesign are also mentioned. Opportunities include housing for the developing world, macroengineering, andother engineering areas. Engineering education and its shortfalls are discussed, including the need for trainingin the systems approach. The paper ends with a brief agenda for engineering design. 2000 Elsevier Science Inc.

IntroductionInnovation is the most important component of progress in any field, activity, or

social institution. In looking at innovation and the future of engineering design, therefrequently is ambiguity in the use of the term. Sometimes it is a synonym for invention,that is, the creation of something new. On the other hand, it is frequently used as asynonym for the adoption of a thing, device, process, or arrangement new to a personor organization.

After some concept clarification, this essay discusses creativity, the changing rela-tionship between science and engineering, the concept of hierarchy of systems in engi-neering and engineering design, drivers of invention and adoption, and new tools indesign.

An agenda of opportunities in engineering design over the next 10 to 100 years isoffered. The opportunities facing the engineering community highlight the limitationsin engineering education with regard to meeting these ever-expanding opportunities.Finally, a brief agenda for engineering design is proposed.

Concept ClarificationBasic invention can occur several times, and is usually followed by a great number

of process or product improvement inventions. Because of the structure of our patent

JOSEPH F. COATES is President of Coates & Jarratt, Inc., Washington, DC. The firm is dedicatedexclusively to the study of the future.

Address correspondence to J. F. Coates, Coates & Jarratt, Inc., Suite A500, 4455 Connecticut AvenueN.W., Washington, DC 20008.

Technological Forecasting and Social Change 64, 121–132 (2000) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. 0040-1625/00/$–see front matter655 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10010 PII S0040-1625(99)00106-7

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system and the customs of history books, there is a tendency to associate an inventionwith one person—Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, or Alexander Graham Bell and thetelephone. We are often misled, and fail to realize that when the time is right there areusually several competing basic inventions in any field. An example of that is thetypewriter. Usually only one or a few competitors survive in the marketplace andbecome the dominant form or forms of the invention.

Adoption, in sharp contrast to invention, can occur limitless numbers of times,even hundreds of millions of times. Adoption means taking on, acquiring, or beginningto do something in a new way, i.e., new to the adopter. Some pioneers will do or usesomething for the first time, and if that is successful others will pick it up. Adoptioncan occur personally or in business, institutions, organizations, or government. In thehousehold, the use of the microwave oven is an example of adoption. In the office,converting from the typewriter to the word processor is adoption. The use of theballpoint pen rather than the fountain pen is a personal adoption. In business, the moveto open office planning is a matter of adoption. In business and government, the useof temporary workers for clerical and professional services is adoption.

Fortunately or unfortunately, we have no institution like the French Academy todiscipline the language and keep categories crisp and clear. Regrettable as it is, theword innovation is often used in the arts, sciences, business, and management, inter-changeably to mean either invention—that is, the creation of something new or itsimprovement—or the adoption by a person or an organization of something that is newto them.

For clarity in this essay we will use two terms—invention and adoption—as appro-priate, rather than the ambiguous umbrella term innovation. Invention and engineeringare most closely associated with the physical artifacts and arrangements of our world.However, it is important to recognize that there also are social inventions, which areoften widely adopted. Examples are sick leave, high school, vacations, labor unions,social clubs, and one side of the street driving.

It is increasingly critical that engineers recognize social inventions, for two reasons.First, they are often important factors in shaping the patterns or opportunities forengineering developments. Second, and perhaps more importantly, for every socialobjective for which an engineering development might be proposed to achieve, I suggestthat there are one or more social inventions that would carry us to the same objective.Consider, for example, highway congestion. The engineering solution is often to buildmore lanes, but competing or complementary social inventions might involve toll roads,high occupancy vehicle lanes, or as we are beginning to see, governmental intervention toinfluence the schedules of work by employers, and the availability of mass transportation.

A more intimate interaction between engineering and social inventions wouldundoubtedly be a benefit to society. It would also make it clear to those in positionsof political and institutional power, where social inventions largely arise, that they canbe handled in the same way that we handle an engineering invention. They can andshould go through a process of problem definition, proposal and examination of alterna-tives, research to define what is to be done, and then a period of experimentation, testand evaluation.

Unfortunately, our social inventions are all too often put forward without the useof modern tools and techniques for their definition, analysis, and evaluation. A recentexample of the failure to do this is the move to push people off welfare by arbitraryrequirements that they find work or be punished.

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CreativityInvention involves a high dose of creativity. People who are early adopters also

often bring a substantial degree of creativity to their decision. There is a large body ofwell-established knowledge about individual creativity. We can identify it, evaluate it,and train people to use their creative capabilities more effectively [1–3].

Lehman, in his monumental study of Age and Achievement, has shown, for example,that the highest order of creativity in scientific achievement or invention tends to peakfor individual people and for a population of scientists or engineers in a specific fieldin a relatively narrow age range [4]. Those peaks vary with the fields. Fields in whichone can move to the forefront quickly tend to have their peak performances quite early,as in mathematics. Those that require training and skill before one can create tend tofind their peaks somewhat later, in their 30s; and fields that require an enormousaccumulation of background before one can even discover the frontier and move beyondit, such as philosophy and history, tend to find their peak achievements in their 40s.

Lehman’s work also established that as one moves from first order, that is, themost important achievements, to second and third order achievements, the age at whichthey occur spreads. There are steep peaks for primary achievements with wider andshallow peaks for second- and third-level achievements. He also found, however, thatachievements are not age bound in any absolute sense. Creative achievements can occurat any age. The implication of his work, of course, is that we should be using this as abasis for education and selection to optimize the performance of people. To the bestof the author’s knowledge, no one has used Lehman’s information in these ways.

In contrast to knowledge of individual achievement, we know little about thesocial aspects of achievement—social aspects in the sense of the work environment, theorganization of people, and the formation of groups and task forces. There is a largeanecdotal literature about creative organizations, coming out of highly productive orga-nizations such as the Bell Laboratories, pharmaceutical firms, and the Defense Depart-ment. But the development of adequate theory and empirical evidence of the generalrules for a creative environment still lie ahead. Even on the physical side of the creativeenvironment we know relatively little. There is good evidence that architecture andphysical design influence workplace creativity, but little systemic work has been doneto reduce it to formal practice. For example, the laboratories of U.S. West, one of theregional telephone companies in the United States, are designed in such a way thatone cannot get to one’s workplace without encountering other people along the way—thefundamental belief being that promoting contacts will stimulate creativity. Their buildingincludes a large number of meeting places, everything from two-person benches at thecoffee machine to standard auditoriums to make it easy for people to meet, to stop, totalk, and to think together.

The Relationship of Science, Engineering, and ApplicationsThrough the 18th and 19th centuries and the early part of the 20th century, many

of the most important inventions came from people operating as independent entitiesor working in small groups. As a new critical invention came forward it was usuallyfollowed by scientists turning their attention to how it worked and to developing knowl-edge and information necessary to improve it. Beginning in the first quarter of the20th century, that pattern has steadily reversed. Now science has become the primarywellspring of ideas, concepts, and developments that are turned into inventions andapplications in university or industrial laboratories. Neither pattern, of course, is abso-lute, but the tidal change is clear. One consequence is that we can see more clearly

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how developments in science are likely to lead to new engineering design. For example,the discovery of a new material, the discovery of a new chemical reaction or scientificresearch on basic characteristics of materials, all will have implications for engi-neering design.

The historic model of the university and the early relationship of science followingengineering and invention has led to a disciplinary structure in the universities that isincreasingly at odds with the reality of the world of invention and engineering design.The scientific and engineering disciplines functioned effectively through the 19th andearly 20th century primarily by breaking down complex areas into tractable problemsthat could be explored, analyzed, understood, theories developed and tested, and practi-cal applications produced. The last half or more of the 20th century, however, has foundthat the world of practical applications is increasingly crossdisciplinary, and even morerapidly becoming interdisciplinary. The integration across fields in the world of practicalapplications is often delayed until the engineer has moved into a job rather than beingpart of his or her university education. Universities to meet their obligations to studentsand to society need to move toward true interdisciplinarity. Although there are anumber of attempts at this, by no means has it become a general, much less a universal,educational model. The university must reflect the structure of the natural world andof the man-made world to promote invention and to accelerate progress.

Incidentally, the most successful engineers in the future will be hyphenated, thatis, crosstrained in two or more areas, for example, biomechanical, nanomaterials, orautomotive ergonomics [5].

Hierarchy of SystemsAll engineering developments can be laid out on a hierarchical scale. At the bottom

of that scale are materials, then parts, then components, devices, subsystems, systems,and macrosystems. The transition from devices to systems may often involve severallayers of subsystems, but ultimately things can be sorted out on the scale from therelatively simple to the most elaborate and complex macrosystems, for example, fromcopper wire to electric grids. Consider the automobile, made of steel, aluminum, plastics,fabric, and other stuff. The system that one considers depends on why one chooses tolook at it; for example, it may be the vehicle or the total highway and vehicle managementsystem. Most day-to-day successful engineering developments are in the midrange—parts, components, devices, and subsystems. New materials come along, and they mayinfluence successively each of those stages, but the macrosystem tends to remain stable.

The Romans learned to build roads, and many of those roads are still functional.We have learned to build modern highways, and their key characteristic is changingmaterials and scale. Inventions along the way like the cloverleaf, lighting and safetycomponents enter into the highway as a system. While that system is stable and likelyto be quite durable, it nevertheless does evolve from continuing subsystem improve-ments. Yet even macrosystems can be totally or partially substituted for, in the waythat the highway system substantially substituted for the railroad system, and in turn,is being partially substituted for by the airplane for longer distance travel. From a socialpoint of view, one can see an even bigger macrosystem—transportation.

The biggest and most important inventions or adoptions are those that alter themacrosystem. However, the most attention often goes to developments that influenceparts and components, because the payoff is immediate, the consequences are clearest,positive outcomes are most likely, and risks of disastrous failures are smallest. A general-ized illustration of this is that a system about to be displaced generally reaches its


highest level of perfection immediately before its demise. The linotype machines aroundwhich newspapers were built for most of this century were never better than whenelectronic word processing and the associated new editorial and composition technologycame into the newspaper industry. Slide rules were never better than just before theywere completely wiped out by the hand-held calculator and the desktop computer.A primary opportunity for engineering design is to consciously shift attention fromcomponents and subsystems to systems and macrosystems, looking for opportunitiesfor radical change or for substitution by systems based on new inventions.

The most macro of systems are the physical infrastructure of society, the physicalnetworks that hold it together, such as transportation, energy, and communications.Promoting, stimulating, retarding, or suppressing invention or adoption in the infrastruc-ture to a substantial degree lies with government. Because the investments in macrosys-tems are so enormous, it is unusual for change to spring up without extensive governmentsupport, whether that is direct payments, tax writeoffs, subsidies, land grants, or by lawor other mechanisms. Many of the most promising macrodevelopments await the gellingof the value of the concept in such a way that it recruits broad public support.

Lower level inventions are primarily driven by business concerns or by governmentintervention in the form of regulation, controls, or constraints. The government also inmany regards has a limited but most important function on the frontier of engineeringdesign, and that is promoting things that meet special government needs to which theprivate sector normally is indifferent or cannot manage to do on its own. The sharpestexamples of that are in defense and aerospace, which have led to basic developmentsin automation, computers, imaging technology, new materials, artificial intelligence,modeling, and robotization. These inventions eventually transfer in some form to theprivate sector for new civilian uses and further development.

The forces operating on business promoting invention and adoption are primarilythose connected with market size, costs, and legal requirements. For example, in theautomotive sector, costs have led to continual changes in manufacturing processes,especially to more automation and robotization. At the same time, costs have led toprocess integration that was unusual as recently as 35 years ago. Back in those old days,the design department operated more or less independently of the rest of the company.When a design was agreed upon, it was turned over to manufacturing. They then hadto figure out how to manufacture it. When a car was produced, it entered the market.The after-market needs had to be satisfied independently. In the past few decades,design for manufacturing, driven by cost considerations, has become universal. Intimacyin planning between design and manufacturing is now routine. As the after-market hasbecome more and more important, we now have cars designed to be tested and diagnosedafter they have been sold.

Legal constraints have their effects on automotive inventions. The most importantones affect safety. The market also has its influence and this shows up most clearly inneglect. There is no successfully marketed mass produced vehicle for handicapped orimpaired people. That has been totally left to the expensive after-market. Yet thereare enough handicapped people that one could profitably meet the market by bringingsome clever and inspired engineering design to manufacturing. If we assume that some-thing like a minimum of 80,000 vehicles per year are required for a modern automobileassembly line, there are many times that number of physically impaired drivers, enoughto create a market.

A more recent example of failure in engineering design or a turning away froman opportunity by the automobile industry is that the car is becoming a mobile office

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for millions of people in the workforce. Yet the industry has avoided any serious designattempts to create, much less supply the equipment and receptacles for office equipment,or to alter designs to accommodate a mobile office. There is something missing in theincentive system or in the awareness system that allows those opportunities in businessand in engineering design to stand neglected. The economist’s term is market failure.

Drivers of Invention and AdoptionAs already discussed, science is a leading driver of invention. Often equally impor-

tant are the pressures of law and regulation. Again, with the automobile we see thedramatic effects of regulatory requirements. Ford could not sell safety features in itscars. After the government mandated seat belts, they became a marketing feature.Regulators also influence commonplace items, such as the beer and soda can, wherenow safety, disposal, and recycling have become primary design considerations.

Rewards, prizes, competitions, and contests are also an important factor in invention[6]. It is difficult to establish outside some areas of science that many people in technicalfields, particularly engineers, are seriously motivated by any expectation of big prizes,like a Nobel. But competitions have been a driving factor in many situations, especiallyin government projects, in the arts, and in building and architecture. Contests historicallyhave had significant outcomes, often driven by the needs of war or other extremecircumstances, such as provisioning explorations. Related but distinctly different, gov-ernment has made competitive bidding an important part of the defense and spaceprograms as a stimulus to creative invention.

New ToolsNew tools are crucial to the future of engineering design. The single most important

cluster of new tools this century has come out of the expanding capabilities of thecomputer. Early applications of the computer for data storage and retrieval systems wereimportant. Today, the computers have gone well beyond making data more convenientlyavailable. Simulation, tests and evaluation, and the creation of visual images of dynamicsituations are elements of most advanced engineering design. The paramount exampleof the use of these new tools is in the Boeing 777. Historically, all commercial airplaneshave had hundreds of shims in them. A shim is usually a thin wedge that is put in placebetween two elements that would otherwise vibrate and either create unacceptablenoise or lead to failure through repeated stress induced cracking. The Boeing 777 wasplanned, designed, built, and evaluated in cyberspace before any metal was bent. As aconsequence, it has no shims. The new tools gave a nearly perfect fit of all the partsand components.

The use of simulation in design is now affecting all technical activities. It is becomingincreasingly routine to design and build facilities and to walk through them in cyberspaceto test them. In the case of buildings, one can furnish them to see how successful thedesign is from a human use point of view. Simulation tools can now be used to testdevices and systems. These tools come together to create images that are not limitedto a device, a building, an apartment or a piece of equipment, but may be of anindustrial complex or a whole community. The ability to give new imagery to design isa fundamental change in the nature of engineering. Soon nothing from a new winebottle opener to an aircraft carrier or a city will be created until it has been thoroughlydesigned, built, tested, evaluated, and modified in cyberspace. Why? Because that willin the long run be the best, most cost-effective, and satisfying way to go.


An Agenda for the Future of Engineering DesignThe 10 to 100 years ahead offers unlimited old and new opportunities for engineering

design. What follows is a sample of attractive possibilities for the future of engi-neering design.

HOUSING FOR THE DEVELOPING WORLD

American and Western European housing has little to offer the mass of humankindin the nonindustrialized countries. Housing for poor people in poor countries cannotbe on the Scarsdale model with some amenities omitted. Successful mass housing mustbe culturally appropriate, based on imaginative new models, and must rely to a greatextent on local materials. If one just concentrates on the needs of the lowest 20% inincome, there may be as little as $1,200 available for a four-person dwelling [7]. Butthere may be limitless amounts of sweat equity, that is the owner’s labor going into thebuilding of the house. What engineering design’s contribution could be is a package tobring advanced technology into play to radically improve the quality of that housing.That package, perhaps amounting to a quarter of the budget, could include solar cells,fiber for reinforced construction in earthquake zones, devices for electricity generation,or waste-disposal facilities. Western engineering knows so little and has so few routesto acquiring information about that multibillion-person market that it is ignored byengineering design.

MACROENGINEERING

Almost all engineering ventures, devices, and developments involve improvement.Those improvements are often quite small, with only 2% being economically attractive.In many cases a 10% improvement is a big deal. Characteristic of macroengineering isthat it is not simply a matter of improvement but of basic change; it fundamentallyalters the situation. Macroengineering is engineering on a scale so large that it is likelyto exceed the budget of any one nation, and is likely to have effects that exceed anynational boundary. Historic examples are the Panama and Suez Canals. A more recentexample is the Chunnel. There has been for over a half century an engaging inventoryof other macroengineering possibilities, and there is even a macroengineering society[8]. What is missing is our capability to build enthusiasm for macrosystem changes.Among the most attractive of the macroengineering prospects are:

1. Towing icebergs from the Antarctic to the arid zones of the world, Baja Califor-nia, Saudi Arabia, and the West Coast of South America, providing fresh waterto fundamentally alter the agriculture situation.

2. A subsea aqueduct carrying fresh water from France to North Africa to restoreagriculture in that sector.

3. Laying down a 100 meter-wide strip of black top on the North African Coastto modify rainfall patterns and to gradually restore the ancient granary thatNorth Africa was in Roman times.

4. Terraforming, the conversion of some planets or moons into habitable spacefor people.

5. A habitable space station, perhaps on the moon or at a libration point.6. A space ship to carry a self-reproducing crew on a 100- to 200-year exploration.7. Engineering to alter the earth’s albedo, that is, its reflectivity into space, to

neutralize the warming effect of carbon dioxide, should greenhouse warmingprove to be significant. This might involve vast strips of reflectors in the uninhab-ited spaces of Canada and Asia or other approaches.

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8. Reroute Asian rivers flowing into the Arctic to have them flow into the CentralAsian agricultural belts.

All of these, and dozens of other macroengineering concepts raise immediateobjections, in terms of possible negative consequences, possible irreversibility of affects,and often a pro forma range of other objections. Obviously, a great deal of analysis,research, and data gathering has to go into any one of these projects. In the UnitedStates, the concept of towing icebergs to the arid zones has enjoyed years of exploration,even down to consideration of where to harvest the Antarctic icebergs, and the optimalspeed with which they could be towed to their target [9]. Yet, nothing has happenedof any significance. Years ago, the Japanese had planned to tow one to Okinawa, andthey learned how to harvest the water to make a temporary winter playground. Anobvious potential recipient is Saudi Arabia, where the resources of oil could easily payfor the much more strained resource of fresh water.

The fact that there are conjectural obstacles to all of these concepts is not a reasonfor dismissing them. Rather, it is a reason for putting resources into exploring how theobjective might be achieved and how to deal with any potential adverse side effects.But who has the money? Who has the interest? Who has the drive? Who has theenthusiasm? Apparently, no one but a handful of engineering enthusiasts. Shouldn’tengineering societies have a well-publicized agenda of macroengineering? If notthem, who?

OTHER ENGINEERING OPPORTUNITIES

Other more modest but important emerging engineering design opportunities are:

1. Integrated logistics: it should be possible for something leaving a factory in anypart of the world to travel to any other part of the world through numeroustransportation modes without ever being touched by a human hand.

2. Dynamic structures: all of the structures ever built have been based upon tensionor compression. We now have the capability to build on a new dynamic paradigm.Buildings could respond in real time to the environmental forces working onthem, whether those forces are strong winds or earthquakes. Dynamic structurescould use featherweight structural elements based on composites, steel cablesto alter the tension on elements of the structure selectively, motors to drive thecables, and sensors to identify the forces and to feed to the central processorfor the pattern of strengthening or slackening of the cables.

3. Nanoengineering: there already are substantial businesses operating at the nanoscale, notably on computers. What remains speculative but attractive is nanoengi-neering in which components at the nanoscale self-build into ever more complexintegrated and large devices. The question is, can the human enterprise in anyway duplicate what nature has done through DNA over 3 billion years?

Still other engineering challenges are: (a) seabed mining, (b) remote surgery, (c)brain implants, and (d) domed cities.

EducationChanges in the structure of the university to be more interdisciplinary, as already

noted, are important for the future of science, engineering, and design. There also is awider mission for education. That is, to broaden citizen awareness of invention andinventors. We must get away from the notion that corporations invent things and beginto move back to identifying individual inventors so we can celebrate them. That is one


way to engage people’s enthusiasm for those fields. One consequence of neglect maybe that those potentially creative people, in fact, become odd and peculiar, and do notlearn how to use their talents.

How many lay people, or even engineers, know who invented television, whoinvented the automatic dishwasher, air-conditioning or the microwave oven, who in-vented the pop-top soft drink and beer can, who invented the fluorescent light, whoinvented any of the plastics so ubiquitous in our lives?

Leta Hollingworth at the Columbia Teachers College assembled, for the first andonly time, a classroom of one in a million children—that is, one in a million in IQ—andset about educating them, from the elementary grades through high school [10]. Tostay within the boundaries of state mandates, the morning was devoted to the stateRegents requirements. In the afternoon, she unfolded her core concepts for educatingthese supremely brilliant children. One of the most important parts was an inquiry intothe origins of familiar things. A 16-year-old could put together on his or her owninitiative an engaging paper on the origin of bicycles that would not only be interestingwhen reported to other 16-year-olds, but to 7- and 9-year-olds as well. A brilliant 8-year-old could report on the origin of buttons and be engaging and informative to all of hisor her classmates.

The second and equally creative portion of her program was to consciously, explic-itly, and forthrightly make it clear to these kids that they were different, and that theyhad to learn to suffer fools gladly. Put in more neutral terms, they were taught toappreciate the limitations of other people, and the need to learn to get along with themon a social level without being overbearing, supercilious, or domineering. All of hergreat accomplishments with those brilliant children have been ignored in a half-centuryof academic milling around on how to deal with truly outstanding intellects.

We also must move to education for creativity from the earliest ages, kindergartenon up. Although there is universal lip service to creativity, the reality is that it is ignoredfrom elementary school through college and university education, except in a few butimportant universities.

Education must begin to explain to people at large how the world works. Therehas never been more ignorance in any society than exists in America today about howthe elementary components of ordinary life come about and work. How many peoplehave any idea of where their fresh water comes from, how it is processed, or wheretheir sewage goes and what happens to it? How many people have any notion of theprocesses that provide the food that they eat? We know a 3-year-old child who askedher mother, “Is there a bigger store somewhere, where the supermarket gets the foodit sells?” The interest is there in knowing how the world works, but the educationalsystem fails to engage it. After several decades or a generation or two, people lackeven the most elementary knowledge to pass to their own children.

Keep in mind that the 19th-century farmer had better intellectual knowledge andcontrol over the important things in his and his family’s life than the typical well-paidAmerican urbanite does in relation to his or hers.

Ignorance is contagious. That contagion is extremely dangerous because it leavesthe innocent, the ill-informed, and the ignorant open to all kinds of wild and bizarreclaims by some crank, or fool, or irresponsible person about a risk or a danger or anew medical remedy or treatment. Ignorance can easily propel political policy processesinto foolish actions. The evolution imbroglio in Kansas is the sharp illustration ofGoethe’s observation that there is nothing more terrifying than ignorance in action.

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Education must begin to give a bigger share of attention to the truly gifted. Insome distorted view of what democracy is about and some perverse concept of egalitari-anism, the truly gifted have been ignored. Putting all so-called exceptional children, thehandicapped and the brilliant, under one rubric shortchanges the most able and thebrightest. It is those most able and brightest on whom our future and the burden ofcreativity, invention, and adoption lies.

Going back to the notion of creativity, we all have some capability in that regard,but it is well established that creativity is independent of IQ in many areas, notably inthe arts. In fields that call for the understanding of a large corpus of knowledge beforeone can become creative, a high IQ is the minimum requirement for entry. In our ever-increasingly complex world, the minimum requirement for entry is likely to get higherrather than lower. The educational system fails to recognize and respond to that reality.

PoliticsIncentives to develop most long-term solutions primarily have to come from govern-

ment. We need some political figures who are prepared to celebrate the potential formacroengineering and push for long-term plans, rather than the so characteristic short-term optimizing that dominates politics. We do not need to change the whole structureof our political system to have some people with vision in the system. A few of themcan have a profound effect on the long-term agenda. This is a role scientific andengineering societies have neglected or attempted in amateurish ways.

A Systems ApproachThe most promising opportunities in the future of engineering design lie in taking

a total systems approach to any issue. Yet what we find is that the structure of oursociety, of education, of business, and our polity is one that prefers smaller ratherthan larger bites. An obvious example of failure to take a systems approach is theenvironmental movement. After almost 4 decades of the contemporary environmentalmovement, the enthusiasts for environmental reform are still operating at a piecemealapproach: air, water, solid waste, noise, etc. Seeing the environment as a totally integratedsystem should promote the development of ecology as the essential science for thatintegration. After 4 decades, ecology remains a science that in all but a few cases canonly give savor, not solid guidance, to environmental management or environmental en-gineering.

Education in trade-offs needs to become a more important part of our world.Engineers know about trade-offs. Design is, if nothing else, a system of sophisticatedtrade-offs. However, even engineers must learn that trade-offs go beyond the physicalcomponents of the system. Trade-offs increasingly should be between and among thephysical, biological, and the social factors. For example, if one were interested in reducingautomobile accidents, the natural engineering design approach is to deal with the curva-ture of the highway, barriers, safety features, the design of the automobile, road surface,and so on. Yet the single highest payoff may not lie in that direction at all. It may liein better driver training. It may lie in in-use training of drivers. Changes in the automobilecould make it a self-reporting system on the quality of the driver’s performance. Or itmay lie in the implementation of new severe legislated penalties for drunk or incompe-tent driving. Engineering design has to be able to expand to embrace the social, thebiological, as well as the physical as it moves to new successes in both invention andadoption.


A closely related consideration is that everyone making decisions, from a business-man to the private citizen to the government official, is often overwhelmed by a toowide range of choices. We need to build into our thinking about design, the methodsfor resolving choices at different scales from components to complete systems [11].

An AgendaThis brief paper is too small a base for a comprehensive agenda for engineering

design, but some points are worth noting in terms of education in the field, and theattitudes and orientation of those working in engineering design.

1. Complexity will be an increasing factor in engineering design. Students andpractitioners must learn more of how to integrate such considerations as struc-ture, design, organization, location, users, short-term and life-cycle costs, choicesof materials, and other converging factors.

2. Trade-offs are the life’s blood of engineering design, but they need to be comple-mented by a much more extensive awareness of the nonphysical possibilities.Biological technologies and social technologies must be integrated into trade-offs and into the possibility of developing complementary and integrated socialand physical, and strategies.

3. Fail-safe systems are well recognized as a common part of design practice. Weneed to move toward the next stage, which is safe-fail design, designing systemsthat can fail, not merely stop, and yet not create a danger or a catastrophe.

4. Systems that limp are needed. Consider the biological analogy—if I have injuredmy foot, I do not necessarily stop walking. I go through a complex of compensa-tions, I continue to walk, but I limp. We need machines that can operate betweenstop or go, on/off, operate/shut down. We need to learn to design systems thatcan limp.

5. Foreign cultures need more attention in engineering education and engineeringpractice. For the upper crust, the wealthy, and prosperous in Worlds 2 and 3,transfer of technologies from World 1 are appropriate, despite the fact that theyoften may be culturally jarring. But for the overwhelming number of applications,cultural consideration should dominate design.1.

6. Macroengineering could hold great benefits for humankind. The study of macro-possibilities should be part of engineering education. In practice, those who dealwith infrastructure and large projects should be looking to design the truemacroproject to bring about benefits far in excess of mere incremental im-provements.

7. The biggest personal and social payoffs will come in moving up the substitutionladder from materials, components, and devices to total systems and macrosys-tems. Engineers in design should be paying continual attention to the possibilitiesof moving up the system all the way to the top, and thereby bringing aboutgreater benefits than the client or sponsor anticipates.

8. Students should be crosstrained. The future of engineering will lie increasinglyin mirroring the complexities of the world, and therefore, one must aggressivelymove away from the cookie-cutter categories, which have characterized thetraditional disciplines and subdisciplines, and begin to train students across

1 World 1 is made up of the advanced nations; World 2 are those countries where needs and resourcesare in rough balance and the countries are prosperous; World 3 are the most backward nation, such asBangladesh and Nigeria.

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disciplinary categories. The practical implication is that those crosstrained engi-neers will command higher incomes, and be more valuable to their employersand to society.

9. Technology is for people, yet the most neglected aspect of design in all categoriesis ergonomics.

References1. Coates, J. F.: Looking Ahead: R&D Firms Building Creative Environments, Research Technology Manage-

ment 35(4) 6–7 (1992).2. Amabile, T. M.: How to Kill Creativity, Harvard Business Review, Sept–Oct, 77–87 (1998).3. Amabile, T. M., and Gryskiewicz, S. S.: Creativity in the R&D Laboratory. Greensboro, NC: Center for

Creative Leadership, May 1987.4. Lehman, H. C.: Age and Achievement. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953.5. J. F. Coates, Inc.: Engineering 2000: A Look at the Next Ten Years, prepared for The American Society

of Mechanical Engineers, Council on Public Affairs, Committee on Issues Identification, June 1990.6. Burke, J.: Connections: Impressions, Scientific American, Sept., 142–143 (1996).7. Coates, J. F.: Third World Housing: The Great Technological Opportunity, Technological Forecasting and

Social Change 42, 91–95 (1992).8. Kitzinger, U.: Macro-engineering and the Earth: World Projects for the Year 2000 and Beyond. Horwood

Publishing Ltd., Chichester, 1998.9. Matthews, R. Apply Ice, New Scientist, Feb. 27, 50 (1999).

10. Hollingworth, L. S.: Gifted Children, Their Nature and Nurture. New York: MacMillan, 1926.11. Hammond, K. R.: Human Judgment and Social Policy. Oxford University Press, New York, 1996.

Accepted 15 November 1999

innovation in the future of engineering design

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