Innovation generation : how to produce creative and useful scientific ideas / Roberta B. Ness.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-234) and index.

Chapter 1: Don't Read this Book -- PART I. The Big Picture: Understanding and Overcoming Barriers to Innovation -- Chapter 2: It All Depends on How You Look at It -- Chapter 3: Overcoming Frames -- Chapter 4: Say it Like you Mean -- Chapter 5: Overcoming Metaphors -- Chapter 6: Check this Out! -- Chapter 7: Becoming a Keener Observer -- Chapter 8: How Biased are You? -- Chapter 9: Overcoming Bias -- Chapter 10: The Brain and Creativity: The Seat of Inspiration -- Chapter 11: The Brain and Creativity: Getting Out in Front -- PART II. Asking and Answering a Scientific Question through Innovation -- Chapter 12: The Joy of Science -- Chapter 13: Asking the Right Question -- Chapter 14: How is a Marriage like a Matchbox? -- Chapter 15: Flip it! -- Chapter 16: A Man Walked into a Bar -- Chapter 17: The Power of Group Intelligence -- Chapter 18: Getting the Most from a Group -- Chapter 19: Incubation -- Chapter 20: Testing Your Idea -- Chapter 21: That Right Idea -- Chapter 22: The Stodginess of Science -- Chapter 23: Overcoming the Stodginess of Science -- Chapter 24: Innovation Incubators -- References -- Answers.

"Innovation Generation presents a fascinating new approach to creative thinking. Using a system of idea-generating methods honed over her illustrious career as a physician, researcher, professor, teacher, and Dean, Roberta Ness provides all the tools needed to learn how to cast aside habitual cognitive maps called frames and draw insights from other fields. The tools focus in on developing a good scientific question: how to expand it to reveal a larger one, pull it into component parts, and turn it on its head to flip cause and effect. Readers will also learn how to change points of view and work more effectively in multidisciplinary groups. Finally, this book coaches readers on incorporating newly acquired innovation tools into the normal scientific process. In so doing, Innovation Generation is a valuable method for advancing scientific aspirations."--Provided by publisher.

"Whether you are a student or an established scientist, researcher, or engineer, you can learn to be more innovative. In Innovation Generation, internationally renowned physician and scientist Roberta Ness provides all the tools you need to cast aside your habitual ways of navigating the every-day world and to think "outside the box." Based on an extraordinarily successful program at the University of Texas, this book provides proven techniques to expand your ability to generate original ideas. These tools include analogy, expanding assumptions, pulling questions apart, changing your point of view, reversing your thinking, and getting the most out of multidisciplinary groups, to name a few. Woven into the discussion are engaging stories of famous scientists who found fresh paths to innovation, including groundbreaking primate scientist Jane Goodall, father of lead research Herb Needleman, and physician Ignaz Semmelweis, whose discovery of infection control saved millions. Finally, the book shows how to combine your newly acquired skills in innovative thinking with the normal process of scientific thinking, so that your new abilities are more than playthings. Innovation will power your science"--Provided by publisher.