Inventing is a deeply human activity that precedes recorded history and underlies most of our progress. Making something that fulfills the promise of imagination is so very gratifying, yet so very challenging. We conceive the possible and impossible alike, the boundary between them being creativity’s native habitat. Only by risking the impossible do we achieve the remarkable.
Engineering is the discipline of designing and building useful things. Often misunderstood as dull and rote, it is actually a platform for great creativity. The difference between engineering and any other way of making things is that engineering involves processes. This makes the work repeatable, ensuring the same result every time, and traceable, allowing the causes of problems to be discovered and fixed. Successful choices are codified so that future efforts are more predictable and less prone to failure.
Some may believe that any sort of process would stand between them and their creative work. While it’s true that too much process can kill innovation, too little can leave it adrift. For every creative effort there is the right amount of process, enough to provide support but not enough to smother the momentum. And yes, determining that right amount is itself a process.
Whether simple or complex, big or small, great creations stand out. They have a certain beauty which can appear almost organic. Their structure has an organized consistency, often with unexpected symmetry. They are first ignored as irrelevant, and later overlooked as obvious. They become inevitable, as if they were discovered rather than invented. And behind every great creation is at least one person who imagined something new and made it real.
This blog is for everyone who imagines great things, who wants to push the boundary of the possible, and who has the drive to make their dreams real.