Crowdsourcing engineering design problems: learning from experiences

The availability of digital data in the fourth industrial revolution brings different trends with new opportunities and challenges for the engineering design community. As an opportunity, these trends would impact engineering design. However, the challenge is finding applications for these trends in engineering design. Crowdsourcing is one of the trends inspired by digital data. It is outsourcing an individually performed task to be mass-performed. This paper explores the application of crowdsourcing in identifying engineering design problems. Identifying an engineering design problem is an aspect of engineering design considered challenging but necessary for inventions. Secondary data from 63 invention-related cases and an interview with a renowned UK inventor are presented. The data contains scenarios on how the engineering design problems solved to qualify for a UK patent grant or application are identified. Lessons from the case studies are presented and discussed, especially regarding crowdsourcing engineering design problems. These seem to be promising ways of supporting the identification of new engineering design problems with inventive benefits once solved.