**2. Creative problem-solving processes in technological innovation**

Creativity is a criterion for evaluating all technological innovation. Imagination is often treated as a synonym for creativity. In the present study, the distinction between imagination and creativity will be stressed so that conditions that enhance engineering imagination and creativity can be better understood. Creativity is defined as the process by which a socially valuable new product is produced [9], whereas imagination is defined as the process by which a new idea emerges in one's mind. This distinction is important because the creation of an appropriate but novel product valued by society is often a very long and complex process (e.g., the designing and manufacturing of an electrical vehicle).

Factors affecting technological creativity include not only an individual's personal characteristics such as ability, personality, and motivation but also the social, intellectual, and technological resources necessary to support such endeavors [10]. Thus, it is argued that highly creative achievement is determined by a multiplicative rule composed of many personal, social, and environmental factors. The absence of one required factor would render the creative effort futile [11]. Imagination, on the other hand, occurs in one's head and is relatively easier to manage and foster through education and training.

Klahr and Simon [8] reviewed studies on historical accounts of scientific discoveries, psychological experiments with nonscientists working on tasks related to scientific discoveries, direct observation of ongoing scientific laboratories, and computational modeling of scientific discovery processes. They proposed that cognitive processes in scientific discovery consist of three components: search through domain knowledge, use of some simple heuristics to consider and generate ideas, and pattern recognition when a solution emerges in the mind. In the present study, it is proposed that although very different kinds of knowledge are required for creative problem-solving activities during each CDIO phase, the creative-thinking processes are nevertheless similar. The conceptual combinations are the simple heuristics or cognitive mechanisms that humans use to imagine and go beyond what is given in our memory.

In brief, every episode of creative accomplishment will go through Wallas's four stages of the creative problem-solving process [6]: first is the preparation stage, during which an individual senses the problem and searches for available solutions but fails; second, in the incubation stage, because of the failure in previous problemsolving attempts, the individual puts aside the problem and shifts attention to some unrelated activities and appears to be disengaged from the problem; third, in the illumination stage, after a short or long period of incubation during which the person does nothing deliberately, the solution to the problem may suddenly pop into the individual's mind; and the last stage is verification, during which the individual performs required tests to see if the idea will indeed work.

These four stages require different cognitive engagement and social participation. For example, extensive learning and searching for information and examples of past and currently available products or practices are the major cognitive activities in the preparation stage. Implementation of the ideas and testing how they accomplish the goals usually require collaborative work and investment of material and financial support from society. Of these four stages, the incubation stage and the illumination stage occur only in an individual's head.

#### *A Model of Technological Imagination and Creativity: Cognitive Task Analysis DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110020*

How the human mind worked used to be regarded as a black box. However, with recent advances in neuroscience and neuroimaging technology, the mind is no longer as black as it used to be. The present study proposes that the way the brain works during incubation to bring about illumination is through the act of imagination. Imagination is a kind of mental activity through which existing knowledge in one's associative brain networks can be activated, combined, and interpreted so that new ideas may be generated. Conceptual combination is thus proposed to be the cognitive mechanism, a simple heuristic, by which the human brain creates new ideas during the incubation stage [12].
