Proposal of Meta-Engineering in the Digital Age for Creating Innovation

At the PICMET ’17 conference, we proposed the Meta-Engineering concept and the MECI cycle in the Ba of networks as a radical engineering approach for realizing innovation in the internet environment. The MECI cycle comprises four processes: Mining, Exploring, Converging, and Implementing. We propose a new MECI cycle that incorporates recent digital tools, because various digital tools have advanced explosively in recent years. The MECI cycle has evolved to a MECI spiral that enables successive innovation. Spiral MECI processes can spur breakthrough innovations when advanced along with digital tools.Blockchain technology supports the Mining process by preventing plagiarization of ideas. Advertising websites are effective at finding talented people to found startups during the Exploring process. Equity crowdfunding working together with venture capital firms facilitates financing difficulties of the startup in the Converging process. Furthermore, digital marketing applied for the Implementing process increases users who might become contributors to innovation as investors. These digital technologies are still developing today. Their further progress is anticipated.Innovation achieved through Meta-Engineering will become much further democratized in the digital age beyond the limits of user-centered innovation, which were introduced in “Democratizing Innovation” (E. von Hippel, 2005).