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

relation(s) between or among originally unrelated nodes (concepts) and generates new concepts. Life experiences and knowledge are indispensable components in the process, with the goal as the engine that ignites all the processes, decisions, and steps taken in CDIO phases of a technological innovation. A technological innovation project involves problems to be creatively solved for the first time in history. The final product is the joint effort of many experts and professionals. For a firm, heavy workload and time pressures are killers of a firm's opportunity to think freely and the tendency to interact with one's coworkers in good humor. In engineering education, providing training regarding the complete CDIO process in technological innovation and execution enables future engineers to gain a broader perspective of their tasks at hand and prepares them with a mind that can solve problems more creatively. The bottleneck in the use of conceptual combination lies firstly in the time-consuming process of knowledge acquisition, not only within one's own application domain but also across other domains, and secondly in the ability to come up with original interpretations, a kind of abstract thinking and hypothesis generation, for a novel conceptual combination. Broad interests, curiosity, and a quest for knowledge are few of the important traits to be cultivated in engineering education in order to achieve minds that value novel, creative ideas and that are willing to play with ideas imaginatively, take reasonable risks, and use labor wisely to implement new ideas.
