NM Week 2.1 – Design Fiction Panel Discussion

One very interesting concept from the ‘Design fiction’ panel which warrants further examination was a question about whether creativity should drive innovation, (think of something then find ways to do it) or whether innovation should drive creativity, (find out what we know how to do, then think of ways to apply it)

I wasn’t sure whether the distinction really held, due largely to the fact that I don’t believe there would be a systematic way to apply one or the other. Creativity drives design just as design drives creativity and has it not always been so? Applying systems of human thought to theoretical design futures is all very well and probably necessary, but between the realm of accident, necessity, creativity and commercial viability, don’t we see a constant intermingling of these two modes of thinking anyway? To me, the catalogueing of these various approaches to thinking is interesting and useful, but doesn’t seem to provide any revolutionary new way to think about the innate human drive to invention.