Through Harmonization of National Technical Regulations to More Sustainability in Engineering Business

This chapter provides readers with specifics of complexity in engineering, delivering, and constructing of industrial plants while working in different countries. Export-oriented companies in mechanical and plant engineering businesses with long supply chains face huge challenges in considering different technical requirements for different types of equipment and for different services and procedures they provide, which lead to time and cost inefficiency. In modern times with different economic, social, and environmental requirements on the one hand and challenges caused by globalization, digitalization, and worldwide climate change; on the other, it is vital to find the ways for more sustainable project management and sustainable business models and to inspire global players to consider sustainability development goals and to become an innovator to drive the others: the suppliers, the clients, and other stakeholders. The first step towards sustainable engineering processes in the globalized world is the harmonization of technical regulations worldwide.

On the Principles of Imagination and Creativity

Human beings are the only mammals to be able to utilize high-level cognitive functions to build knowledge, innovate, and communicate their complex ideas. Imagination, creativity, and innovation are interlinked in the sense that one leads to the other. This chapter details the concepts of imagery, imagination, and creativity and their inter-relationships in the first section. Next, the author discusses the historical perspectives of imagination pertaining to the accounts of famous philosophers and psychologists like Aristotle, Kant, Hume, Descartes, Sartre, Husserl, and Wittgenstein. Section 3 and 4 present the neuro-biological correlates of imagination and creativity, respectively. Brain regions, neuronal circuits, genetic basis, as well as the evolutionary perspective of imagination and creativity are elicited in these sections. Finally, creativity and innovation are explored as to how they will contribute to knowledge build-up and advances in science, engineering, and business in the fourth industrial revolution and the imagination age.

The Imaginary Structure of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Science fiction is increasingly involved in innovation processes in technological sectors. The imaginary, through design fiction, stimulates the creativity of decision makers and engineers who work to create a better world through technoscience. Science fiction participates in global innovation by constructing sectoral myths and by proposing a new form of rationality integrating the technical imaginary. Imaginnovation is a neologism, a synthesis of the terms imagination and innovation. This practice, already developed in several companies and organizations, will guide the decision-making process during the next industrial revolution. Science fiction appeared more than 200 years ago, when technical progress profoundly changed society. It later became an integral dimension of collective psychology. Its critical dimension must also be considered as a structuring element of the contemporary technical imagination. Innovation realizes imagination and science fiction allows the productive system to access the unconscious fantasies of individuals and social groups.

Knowledge Sharing and Creation in Virtual Teams

For a more integrative view on social, technical, and individual aspects of knowledge sharing and generation in virtual environments, the current contribution suggests a socio-technical framework based on distributed cognition theory and transactive memory systems. In combination, these well-established social theories provide theoretical foundations for describing and understanding how groups of individuals organize shared activities and interact with technology to store, retrieve, and use individual knowledge for common problem solving and innovation.

Cognitive Skills Development at Higher Educational Level in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

To compete in the workplace of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, cognitive skills development is critical. The traditional education system is not geared to prepare students for the demands of the future workplace and the disruptions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and beyond. The objective of this chapter is to explore the development of cognitive skills in higher education with a specific focus on creativity. The chapter explains that higher education institutions need to place greater emphasis on developing cognitive skills and different types of intelligences to meet the demands of the future workplace. Fostering creativity is particularly important in this regard. The chapter presents two ways of assessing creativity and three techniques to develop this key skill in students. The author used qualitatively summarized evidence on the topic using informal and subjective methods to collect and interpret studies and secondary data.

Is an Artist a Better Scientist?

This chapter regards itself with the verification of theses by American scientist Robert Root-Bernstein who through scientific work spanning decades was able to find support for the argument that a successful scientist is more likely to have an artistic avocation than their less successful counterparts. This chapter takes a close look at three studies by Root-Bernstein and goes on to try and affirm his findings by conducting and analyzing interviews with scientists that have an artistic avocation. The results of the study show that art offers an escape for scientists to reorganize their thoughts. Further, if scientists combine the two worlds of art and science, the scientists can directly benefit from their artistic avocation for their scientific work.

Knowledge Management and the Digital Native Enterprise

This chapter will provide insights into the positioning and manifestation of knowledge management in a digital native enterprise. The findings of the literature review will be enhanced with the findings from three use cases reflecting on the infliction point between knowledge management and work performed in the digital native enterprise. The aforementioned will enable early insights into the role and contribution of knowledge management in an ecosystem where people and devices are seamlessly connected and strategic decisions are needed in respect of the positioning and manifestation of knowledge management, as well as the skillfulness required by knowledge managers within the construct of the digital native enterprise.

From the Visual Turn to Turned Up Visuality

The humanities and social sciences discovered the field of visual research in the 1990s and proclaimed several “turns” to emphasize the importance of visuality (or the visual mode) and shape the future direction of research: imagic turn, pictorial turn, iconic turn, and visualistic turn. Almost 30 years later, the individual lifeworlds are heavily influenced by the digitalization of technologies and the globalization of material and immaterial goods – products, ideas, and imaginations that rely on certain ways of visual presentation, images, and visual media in general. The individual lifeworlds are increasingly based on digitally mediated visuals and the interaction with as well as the communication using them (often intertwined with direct ways to interact, like touch, speech, or gestures). Visual-based alternatives to commonly used methods like interviews and surveys are discussed, finishing off with an introduction to the methodology of the creative interview, a qualitative instrument to gain and explicate information, and imaginations using respondent-produced sketches and drawings.

Ecological Crisis, Sociality, and the Digital (Self-)Management

Following various findings of empirical studies, there is no doubt that the ecological crisis has to be regarded as one of the most pressing problems of the present. The chapter first discusses the importance of individual action for the ecological transformation of society. A following sketch of the limitations of political and economic action shows that the self-management of modern subjects is indispensable for such a transformation. The next section discusses social reasons that prevent the development and implementation of new, pro-environmental types of practice. Finally, on the basis of this diagnosis, some recommendations are formulated for a (yet to be developed) creative management of self-management.

SMEs in the 4th Industrial Revolution

Apart from the emergence of new technologies, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is characterized by demographic developments that will provoke fundamental changes in the labor markets of many industrialized countries. This situation will especially affect small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that are based in rural regions with rapidly increasing numbers of retirees and an equally rapidly shrinking population of young people. If these companies want to maintain their levels of production in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, they will need to pursue new creative strategies for attracting the best talents. All of this is true for Saxony, a highly industrialized German region with a large percentage of SMEs that is hit hard by declining birth rates and high levels of emigration, and the East Asian society of Taiwan that faces similar challenges. At the same time, many well-educated members of the young generation in both regions feel disrespected, underpaid, and without prospects.