14Summary, Concluding Points, and Recommendations
14.1 The Rationale for This Book
This book is intended to be complementary to traditional academic engineering education, which teaches engineering theory and supporting practical skills. The book's central theme is how fresh ideas and new technologies can be taken forward and turned into successful products. In this context, it provides a framework and set of principles for approaching this topic. It does not, however, attempt to provide a formulaic approach, which is unlikely to work given that every situation has different needs and therefore requires a tailor‐made solution.
In the business community, ‘innovation’ is widely recognised as a crucial factor in maintaining the competitiveness of enterprises, as well as the spur to creating new businesses. From this point of view, the approach to technology and product development recommended in this book represents the practical means by which innovation can be brought to reality. It is based on the author's own direct experience, mainly in the field of complex engineering products but the principles can be applied more widely. The book should be of interest to engineers in the early stages of their careers, to researchers considering turning their ideas into commercial reality, to managers of non‐engineering functions, and to investors. It is deliberately written in nontechnical language.
A key objective of the book is to draw distinctions between ‘research’ work to identify potential ...