Innovations in Ship

Design & Construction

What do you mean by Engineering

Design?

'Design' can be defined as the creative component of engineering - by which I

mean that component in which a new thing is created.

Design thus means the engineering discipline of assembling the functional

elements of the system into a coherent whole, to meet some set of
performance requirements.

Design Definition
(Continuation)

Design is also a uniquely anthropomorphic activity: Design requires a designer,

the act of design is an act of the human, and not a feature of the product
being designed.

To this end Lamb's (SD&C, 2003) definition of design which is summarized as

"design is decision-making." is very appropriate.The definition succinctly
captures the creative element, or the human input.

Decisions are by their nature the product of something external to the design
process - they are the actions of a Designer, not attributes of the design. This
has parallel connotations to the word 'create', which similarly requires a
creator.

Innovation

'Innovation' can be defined as "Design which has no forebears."

Much engineering design is derivative. Design in Naval Architecture begins with

a major unit on how to establish trends of best practice by studying other
ships, and then developing ones ship so that it lies within those trend lines.
This approach is an inherently derivative or incremental improvement
approach.

By 'Innovation' we mean something that is in some sense opposite: A design

that does not follow where others have gone before. This definition is not
perfect, because we will see that one of the techniques of formalized
innovation is to simply broaden our set of candidate forebears, and return to
the practice of derivative design while drawing on a more distant set of
parents, but for purposes of this discussion this definition is sufficient to allow
our conversation to proceed.

Innovation versus Invention

Popadiuk, (2006)

"In the research literature, the definition of innovation includes the concepts of
novelty, commercialization and/or implementation. In other words, if an idea has
not been developed and transformed into a product, process or service, or it has
not been commercialized, then it would not be classified as an innovation.

Wikipedia

"Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a new
idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea
or method itself."

Ship Design Innovation Design or the

final product

Within ship design this then begs the question of what the product is: Is it the
ship, or is the design a product in its own right? We can assume that the ship
design is a product in its own right, and that the commercialization of a
design is the act of sending the design to the shipyard for construction.

In similar manner a Concept Design may be innovative, if it commercialized

to the point where it can be transitioned to the next phase, commonly
Preliminary Design.

Sustaining vs Disruptive

Innovations are sometimes divided into two classes; Sustaining and

Disruptive. Christensen (2003)* provides a helpful discussion of the
difference between these two types of innovation, by reference to a case
history in the disk drive industry. In this case the sustaining innovations
involved technologies yielding ever-increasing data storage density in the
then-existing 5-inch disk format. The disruptive innovation was the
introduction of the 3-inch disk drive, which made laptop computers feasible.

* The Innovators Dilemma

Sustaining Innovation

A sustaining innovation helps an industry sustain a rate of growth despite the

maturity of its constituent technologies. Most technologies follow an S-curve
of development ,wherein there is a low-growth tail during the items nascent
phase, and a high-growth boom during which the technology rockets into
prominence. After some period of time however the technology will begin to
plateau as its own development rate diminishes.

Disruptive Innovation

A disruptive innovation may be thought of as one which creates a whole new

market, even perhaps eliminating the market which came before. For Eg. the
motorcar was a disruptive technology to the proverbial buggy-whip maker.

In naval parlance a disruptive technology is called a game changer, and the

advent of the submarine and aircraft carrier are two obvious examples of
disruptive platform technologies.

Incremental vs Radical Innovation

An incremental innovation is one which improves some component of the

existing system, while leaving the system architecture and functionality
basically unchanged. Thus, to create an example in ship design, the
invention of the controllable-pitch propeller is an incremental innovation
in improving ship propulsive efficiency and performance.

By contrast a radical innovation is one which results in, not an improvement

of an existing capability, but a whole new capability. Again from the field of
ship design the innovation of the hovercraft, with its amphibious
capability, is a radical innovation in ship design.