The culture of innovation and sustainable development: Challenges for engineering

Abstract

The challenges that sustainable development offers, involve important revisions of cultural models, not only social, but also in the very practice of engineering. To assume change, it is important to understand the connections between ideas, belief systems and reality itself. Change is possible when the system of ideas and beliefs of people, organizations and society becomes more flexible. Change is facilitated by understanding the dynamic processes that connect ideas with experiences. The starting point of change has a lot to do with assuming states of creative functioning, associated with imagination, intuition, the ability to compromise and to undertake projects and the creation of spaces for appreciation and observation. This is where innovation is useful, as that capacity to discover and assume the new possibilities that allow technological, social and human functioning within acceptable parameters in relationship to sustainability. Here, some mechanisms to unlock the creative and innovative forces in engineering practice are discussed, and the possibilities and advantages of having a creative and innovative ideas system as a basis for achieving sustainability are considered. Ten operating schemes are proposed, associated with the laws of modern physics, which contribute to the development of creativity, innovation and sustainability in engineering work.