Brian David Johnson a consumer architecture expert based at Intel Corporation writes: “Productively confusing science fact and science fiction may be the only way for the science of fact to reach beyond itself and achieve more than incremental forms of innovation”. In the innovation process, a prototype is critically important to the design and development process. A prototype is often used as part of the product design process to allow engineers and designers the ability to explore new design alternatives, test themes and confirm performance prior to starting the production of a new product.

Creative science prototyping goes a stage further by seeking to harness the creativity of the arts (writers and artists), media, social scientists, business and management theorists with technologists, engineers and scientists in the innovation (product and market development) process. Its purpose is to develop new theories, scenarios and visions to supplement technological advances and their evidenced or imaginary social and commercial implications. In essence we are focused on the development of future products/services through an innovation process, which combines the pragmatic views of consumers, creativity of writers/artists/intellectual scholarship with the technological visions and prototype designs of product designers, technologists and consumer architect specialists. Our central focus will be on the critical role that harnessing creativity can and does play in the innovation process.

This special issue of TFSC aims to combine contributions from technologists, innovation theorists, business and management scholars together with works from leading science fiction writers together with engineering, science and medicine. These creative prototypes should be structured as follows: 1) Introduction and theoretical context to the prototype; 2) Background to the story vignette; 3) Vignette (short story, concept scoping study, rapid prototype demonstration, theatre/radio play, film/TV script; product development report, novella, novel synopsis); 4) Concluding discussion including reference to the implications for technology forecasting and social change for your vignette.

If you are interested in submitting a paper to this special edition then, in the first instance, submit a short abstract of around 500 words, describing the content of your paper.

For further information, or to submit your abstract, please email one of the following (copied to the others):
Dr Gary Graham, Leeds University Business School. E: g.graham@leeds.ac.uk; Prof Vic Callaghan, Essex University; vic@essex.ac.uk; Dr Deb Abikat, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; da@unc.edu; Dr Anita Greenhill, Manchester Business School; a.greenhill@mbs.ac.uk