In this article idea processors are studied as creativity supporting system
s. Two related reviews are presented. The first review examines some aspect
s of idea processors and compares them with some existing work from Al rese
arch community. The second review is concerned with using retrospective ana
lysis for technical invention (particularly the invention of artifacts). Re
trospective analysis not only opens new opportunities for knowledge-based a
pproaches in idea generation, but also offers new mechanisms to deal with s
ome problems faced by idea processors using object-oriented features. To il
lustrate our new approach of idea generation, we also provide a brief sketc
h of our project which uses a Prolog program to implement some key ideas pr
esented in this article. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
.