In economy nowadays, the act of innovation is in general social; it requires the management of knowledge, and the techniques and methodologies to drive it. Innovation is not the product of one isolated intelligence, instead, it is the result of a multi-disciplinary workgroup lead by a process or a methodology. The conceptual design, which is found in the first stages of the innovation process, represents one of the most important challenges in industry nowadays. One of the main challenges faced by chemical industries related to the conceptual design phase is to provide the means in the form of methods and computational tools, for solving problems systematically, at the same time that benefiting from the collective efforts of individual intelligences involved. Hence, the main objective of this work is to provide a solution to improve the creative capacity of a team involved in the innovation process, in particular the preliminary (critical) phase of conceptual design. Consequently, it is important to understand the techniques, methods and tools that best support the generation of novel ideas and creative solutions. In addition, it is necessary to study the contribution of information and communication technologies as the mean to support collaboration. Web technologies are considered as complementary tools to implement methods and techniques in collaborative design, and particularly in the conceptual design stage. These technologies allow setting up distributed collaborative environments to bring together the resources and the experts who can relate the existing pieces of knowledge to new contexts. It is the synergy created in this kind of environment, which allow producing valuable concepts and ideas in the form of Collective Intelligence. Nevertheless in most existing solutions for collective intelligence or crowdsourcing environments, they do not report the use of a particular methodology to improve the participants' creativity. The solution in this work describes a social network service that enables users to cooperatively solve problems oriented (but not limited) to the phase of conceptual design. In this work we propose that the use of Collective Intelligence in combination with the model TRIZ-CBR could lead the creative efforts in a team to develop innovative solutions. With this work we are looking for connecting experts from one particular field, TRIZ practitioners and stakeholders with the objective to solve problems in collaboration unlashing the collective intelligence to improve creativity. This work uses the basis of the concept named "Open CAI 2.0" to propose a solution in the form of a theoretical framework. The contributions seek to move the development of the field in Computer Aided Innovation a step forward.

This thesis describes the approach and results of the research to create a TRIZ based computer aided innovation tools (AEGIS and Design for Wow). This research has mainly been based around two tools created under this research: called AEGIS (Accelerated Evolutionary Graphics Interface System), and Design for Wow. Both of these tools are discussed in this thesis in detail, along with the test data, design methodology, test cases, and research. Design for Wow (http://www.designforwow.com) is an attempt to summarize the successful inventions/ designs from all over the world on a web portal which has multiple capabilities. These designs/innovations are then linked to the TRIZ Principles in order to determine whether innovative aspects of these successful innovations are fully covered by the forty TRIZ principles. In Design for Wow, a framework is created which is implemented through a review tool. The Design for Wow website includes this tool which has been used by researcher and the users of the site and reviewers to analyse the uploaded data in terms of strength of TRIZ Principles linked to them. AEGIS (Accelerated Evolutionary Graphics Interface System) is a software tool developed under this research aimed to help the graphic designers to make innovative graphic designs. Again it uses the forty TRIZ Principles as a set of guiding rules in the software. AEGIS creates graphic design prototypes according to the user input and uses TRIZ Principles framework as a guide to generate innovative graphic design samples. The AEGIS tool created is based on TRIZ Principles discussed in Chapter 3 (a subset of them). In AEGIS, the TRIZ Principles are used to create innovative graphic design effects. The literature review on innovative graphic design (in chapter 3) has been analysed for links with TRIZ Principles and then the DNA of AEGIS has been built on the basis of this study. Results from various surveys/ questionnaires indicated were used to collect the innovative graphic design samples and then TRIZ was mapped to it (see section 3.2). The TRIZ effects were mapped to the basic graphic design elements and the anatomy of the graphic design letters was studied to analyse the TRIZ effects in the collected samples. This study was used to build the TRIZ based AEGIS tool. Hence, AEGIS tool applies the innovative effects using TRIZ to basic graphic design elements (as described in section 3.3). the working of AEGIS is designed based on Genetic Algorithms coded specifically to implement TRIZ Principles specialized for Graphic Design, chapter 4 discusses the process followed to apply TRIZ Principles to graphic design and coding them using Genetic Algorithms, hence resulting in AEGIS tool. Similarly, in Design for Wow, the content uploaded has been analysed for its link with TRIZ Principles (see section 3.1 for TRIZ Principles). The tool created in Design for Wow is based on the framework of analysing the TRIZ links in the uploaded content. The ‘Wow’ concept discussed in the section 5.1 and 5.2 is the basis of the concept of Design for Wow website, whereby the users upload the content they classify as ‘Wow’. This content then is further analysed for the ‘Wow factor’ and then mapped to TRIZ Principles as TRIZ tagging methodology is framed (section 5.5). From the results of the research, it appears that the TRIZ Principles are a comprehensive set of innovation basic building blocks. Some surveys suggest that amongst other tools, TRIZ Principles were the first choice and used most .They have thus the potential of being used in other innovation domains, to help in their analysis, understanding and potential development.

This article aims to turn the attention of researchers and practitioners in the innovation and engineering management field towards a more fine grained view on the influence of Information Technologies (IT) and New Product Development (NPD) capabilities on innovation outcomes in different stages of maturity. Computer Aided Innovation (CAI), as a specific but often overlooked category of IT-tools for innovation activities, is introduced as having the potential to positively influence the innovation supporting capabilities. Based on current and emerging developments in the fields of CAI and NPD, a revised version of the conceptual model of the CAI-NPD-systems maturity framework is proposed.

L'innovation est un processus complexe qui demande des techniques et des outils collaboratifs pour la gestion des connaissances et la communication, afin que les entreprises surmontent les défis d'une économie concurrentielle. Une nouvelle catégorie d’outils connus sous l’acronyme CAI (Computer Aided Innovation) émerge parmi l’éventail des technologies assistées par ordinateur afin de répondre aux demandes industrielles pour une plus grande fiabilité des nouveaux produits et procédés. L’objectif de ces outils (en cours de développement) est d’aider les concepteurs durant tout le processus d’innovation. Actuellement la mise en oeuvre d’un tel outil doit prendre en considération deux développements récents majeurs. Le premier est d’ordre technologique avec les possibilités offertes par le Web 2.0 dans le développement de logiciel. Le deuxième est plus stratégique avec un changement de vision de l’innovation passant de l’innovation fermée (interne à l’entreprise) à l’innovation ouverte (Open Innovation). Ces deux aspects conduisent à de nouvelles formes de CAI nommé Open CAI 2.0. Cette recherche propose une des briques d’un tel outil, pour assister les ingénieurs procédés à résoudre des problèmes innovants principalement dans la phase de conception préliminaire. Nous présentons la structure et la fonctionnalité d’un cadre de collaboration qui met en oeuvre une méthode développée basée sur le couplage entre la théorie TRIZ, et une technique de gestion des connaissances: le raisonnement à partir de cas (RàPC). Ce cadre est une extension du modèle TRIZ-RàPC validé dans le domaine du génie de procèdes. L’approche du processus de résolution est illustrée sur une étude de cas traitant de la gazéification de la biomasse. / In economy nowadays, the act of innovation is in general social; it requires the management of knowledge, and the techniques and methodologies to drive it. Innovation is not the product of one isolated intelligence, instead, it is the result of a multi-disciplinary workgroup lead by a process or a methodology. The conceptual design, which is found in the first stages of the innovation process, represents one of the most important challenges in industry nowadays. One of the main challenges faced by chemical industries related to the conceptual design phase is to provide the means in the form of methods and computational tools, for solving problems systematically, at the same time that benefiting from the collective efforts of individual intelligences involved. Hence, the main objective of this work is to provide a solution to improve the creative capacity of a team involved in the innovation process, in particular the preliminary (critical) phase of conceptual design. Consequently, it is important to understand the techniques, methods and tools that best support the generation of novel ideas and creative solutions. In addition, it is necessary to study the contribution of information and communication technologies as the mean to support collaboration. Web technologies are considered as complementary tools to implement methods and techniques in collaborative design, and particularly in the conceptual design stage. These technologies allow setting up distributed collaborative environments to bring together the resources and the experts who can relate the existing pieces of knowledge to new contexts. It is the synergy created in this kind of environment, which allow producing valuable concepts and ideas in the form of Collective Intelligence. Nevertheless in most existing solutions for collective intelligence or crowdsourcing environments, they do not report the use of a particular methodology to improve the participants' creativity. The solution in this work describes a social network service that enables users to cooperatively solve problems oriented (but not limited) to the phase of conceptual design. In this work we propose that the use of Collective Intelligence in combination with the model TRIZ-CBR could lead the creative efforts in a team to develop innovative solutions. With this work we are looking for connecting experts from one particular field, TRIZ practitioners and stakeholders with the objective to solve problems in collaboration unlashing the collective intelligence to improve creativity. This work uses the basis of the concept named "Open CAI 2.0" to propose a solution in the form of a theoretical framework. The contributions seek to move the development of the field in Computer Aided Innovation a step forward.

This article aims to turn the attention of researchers and practitioners in the innovation and engineering management field towards a more fine grained view on the influence of Information Technologies (IT) and New Product Development (NPD) capabilities on innovation outcomes in different stages of maturity. Computer Aided Innovation (CAI), as a specific but often overlooked category of IT-tools for innovation activities, is introduced as having the potential to positively influence the innovation supporting capabilities. Based on current and emerging developments in the fields of CAI and NPD, a revised version of the conceptual model of the CAI-NPD-systems maturity framework is proposed.