A successful person is someone who makes others successful.
In that spirit, here is my thinking, and my curated thoughts of others, on how to best design, develop and make new things, work with people and achieve whatever it is you’re trying to achieve so that you may also be in a position to be able to help others do the same.
How to use this website
My name is Dr. Ed Elias, I’ve a PhD in user-centred engineering design and I’ve spent many years working as an engineering entrepreneur (an ‘innovator’ as I prefer to call it, or just an ‘inventor’ if no one else wants what I’ve made), building new products and businesses, as an angel investor to other engineering start-ups, as a consultant, a free-lancer, an aerospace R&D supervisor and now as a part-time senior lecturer at the University of Bath.
University of Bath Students:
In the world of COVID-19 and remote university teaching, this website will be the starting point for our class discussions. Each topic will be outlined here for you to read through before we meet. It will hopefully cover the basics, encourage thoughts of your own, bring up things you don’t understand and perhaps things you disagree with. Bring all those to the class where we’ll dive into each of them. There may be some additional material which can not be publicly shared due to copyright on the Bath Moodle pages.
For those of you reading this who are not students at the University of Bath, enjoy. If there is anything I can help you with do please let me know. I’ll try and respond as soon as I can.
For more information on these teaching technique please click here otherwise head to the Taught Subjects page to begin.
The majority of the material on this website are my thoughts on common methods, tools and approaches to the subjects covered, with some of my own original thinking around the use of reflective practise in innovation mapping and novel development activities.
My Latest Thinking…
I find it too hard to keep track of all the different discussions, languages, frameworks and approaches that have been thought of and talked about when trying to make innovation happen. It’s just too confusing a space to be without a map. As a visual and pattern thinker, I need a picture. How does it all relate and how do they all inter-mix.
Innovation as a term is an overused cliché term these days. Any new idea is talked about as being an innovation. This is unhelpful and disrespectful to the real innovations that actually make an impact and could be considered true solutions to whatever the problem was you were trying to solve.
Introducing my Innovation Castle.
You as the innovator must go on a quest to find a true solution. Through the 8 towers that surround it, past the moat of unjustified confidence and through the terrain of Culture, Leadership, Understanding and Operations. A true solution is the epicentre of Viable, Desirable and Feasible. I hope you find this as useful as I do.
Get in touch.
Any questions, issues or thoughts on this material I’d love to hear from you. There are very few right answers, methods and advice is built on experiences and research but situations change and there are always exceptions.
So I’d love to hear from you if you have different experiences from what I’ve described here so that I can continue to make this site a more holistic source of explanation and understanding.
Thank you.