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Does your process involve invention? If so, please describe the three most recent things you have invented and why it was necessary to invent something new.
That�s it. As an interviewer, you can ask this question of a candidate. As a candidate, you can ask this question of the team you are considering joining.
The results are really easy to interpret. Does your team invent new things in the course of its work? If so, what are you to make of a candidate who doesn�t invent new things and believes that software should be built by integrating tried and true existing components? Such a candidate is not wrong, but are they a good fit?
I thought it was a cool article, a neat question... I figured it could be a good topic for concersation here.
Inventing is something I regularly do. Most of my published works stem from some methodology I invented, which I invented to be able to answer questions that are not easy to answer with current methods.
It's also something we see ANet putting a lot of effort into.
The article is also interesting because it says that there are different approaches to invention. For example, sometimes it's better to stick to known solutions because inventing is a costly process.
Discuss...|||The article seems to be solely concerned with software invention. I also find it vague and intentionally obscure, like I'm trying to solve a riddle just by reading it.
I am a chemist and though there are some similarities, chemical inventions demand other protocols. The mere fact that chemicals are real, while software is virtual, opens up a myriad of associated concerns--not the least of them being safety hazards and environmental impact.
For chemical inventions, of which I have a handful of patents, the expense lies not in the research as much as the followup. Legally patenting a chemical invention is a long and costly process.|||The article was for a coding website I subscribe to, so yeah, it's software-related. Though I think it has wider applications... the general concept anyway.
Interesting that the cost of inventing is cheaper than patenting with chemicals. I think generally copyright is expensive, if such a copyright is needed. In many cases though, it is not.
In games for example, you can't copyright gameplay (yet) so innovation only means that your game gets the attention of gamers and then later on becomes the next clone subject... so you need to make a choice to continuously innovate (and risk), or to stick with the proven path.
I thought that there was an interesting argument there about assessing the need for innovation... sometimes it's just not needed.|||Quote:
Interesting that the cost of inventing is cheaper than patenting with chemicals.
It completely depends on many factors, of course, such as what kinds of chemicals you're working with and for what purpose. Pharmaceutical chemistry, for instance, is an expensive proposition due in part because it's so highly regulated.
I work typically with plastics, foams, resins and other applications for the packaging and insulating industries--though we are branching out into food packaging as well, which is a whole different story. Outside of the initial setup costs (for reactors, compressive/tensile and g-force shock testing machinery, general lab equipment, liquid chromatography and spectral analysis devices, computers, etc.) there is little ongoing financial requirement besides my decidedly modest salary. There are so many chemical supply vendors in competition with one another that any materials I need are usually supplied as free samples, as much as I want.|||Everyone invents, even in their daily lives; its a living must to have. Whether the invention affects the masses or just oneself, there is no evolution (can be a lot of different things) without it.
I think using the term "invention" leans more towards resulting product, targeted more to a specific area (as in that article with software), whereas ingenuity, (imo) lends its definition more generally to the actual working of the creative process; and can be attributed to a more broad topics of resulting invention. Rather than does ones process involve invention; how good is your ingenuity (to be defined by your results).
My discipline is music, and though a piece of music written is rather referred to as a composition, I do not see why it cannot also be referred to (and this can be argued) as an invention (especially if you write an "invention"
...*cough*); actually I like the term composition as a resulting product rather than invention because there is nothing we actually invent that is not made up of ideas, material, patterns already around us; even that which is independently conceived; invention kind of seems more like a copyright term in this regard to me.|||CMERTb - I do like what you said about music and composition... and the creative process. Very... creative.Invention *should* apply to daily lives, but many people avoid it as much as they can... sometimes without valid reason. Likewise, some people like my like to re-invent the wheel, they'll invent even when there is no real need for it.
Practical inventors define a need first, and then create an invention to fill that need.|||I agree with that; better to go nowhere than backwards, but best to go forwards.|||Nice thing is that as a group, we can try a bunch of different things and select what works and discard what doesn't. That's what evolution is. It's not perfect, but in most cases it improves whatever you had originally. Or we all die.
*cough* where was I?
The problem with inventing is that you often don't know what is forward, so you have to jiggle around for a while before you find the way forward.|||I don't think I've ever REALLY invented anything, no. I do write and compose a little, but "invent" ... Not so much.
When I was filling out the paperwork at my new company, there was actually a form for you to list all copyrights and inventions you held. Kind of interesting.|||As a student of law, I'm anathema to invention.
Though, as a telemarketeer, guess I could throw out every conversation I have. Almost all require some mild form of spur-of-the-moment 'invention'.
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