Mathematicians often marvel at how they dream up concepts such as "zero" or "sum", and then seem to have no say about how these things behave.
Some phone fanatics even dream up concept designs and post them online, hoping that manufacturers and operators will take note.
RINAT ARUH and Johan Liden, the founders of Aruliden, a product design and marketing firm in Manhattan, spend their days rethinking products that seem ripe for reinvention, and dreaming up concepts for companies like Motorola, Puma and Microsoft.
Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues -- both scruffy, intellectually driven young designers -- really work out of a garage: In a space filled with electric saws, lathes and sanders and next to a home cantina that pokes out of a neighbor's house, they hack through plywood and dream up concepts as they blast Internet radio.
Internet artist (and University of California at Berkeley robotics professor) Ken Goldberg dreamed up the concept.
The company gradually changed into what is known as a project-management organization, in which in-house designers still dreamed up the basic concepts but contracted with outside firms for services, manufacturing and engineering design.
The enigmatic sensuality of "Emperor" definitely seeped into the concept Craig Murray dreamed up.
The supermoppet Haley Joel Osment is the troubled student who dreams up the concept of "paying forward" by performing random acts of kindness for three strangers, each of whom must in turn do the same.
The team that dreamed up the concept and built the prototype was led by Wei Chen, a postdoctoral scholar in Cui's lab.
Phil Beckett, a DJ who dreamed up the concept with O'Toole, realised the idea was catching on when they had to start turning people away.
In her six decades behind the camera, she produced magazine covers and big ad campaigns, but she also enjoyed a moment of renown as the designer who, she said, "dreamed up the concept of a 'one-size-fits-all' garment".
