Can Innovation Be Automated?

JimmyQS writes "The Harvard Business Review blog has an invited piece about Innovation Software. Tony McCaffrey at the University of Massachusetts Amherst talks about several pieces of software designed to help engineers augment their innovation process and make them more creative, including one his group has developed called Analogy Finder. The software searches patent databases using natural language processing technology to find analogous solutions in other domains. According to Dr. McCaffrey 'nearly 90% of new solutions are really just adaptations from solutions that already exist — and they're often taken from fields outside the problem solver's expertise.'"

Re:Can we stop this tired cliche?

[TeknoHog]

But correlation is not causation! Also, hot grits.

Analogy Finder?

[ilsaloving]

I tried to use that analogyfinder site, but I couldn't find the setting for 'cars'.