driving force

plural driving forces

1. Impetus; a person or thing that causes, stimulates, or motivates something to happen.

   Every living creature has a driving force that pushes him in the direction of certain goals.

   2012, Hugh Downs, Yours Truly, Hugh Downs, →ISBN

   4 more examples

   Many authors see a digital revolution taking place today and stress that this is a driving force behind many changes in companies.

   2003, Manja Ledderhos, Strategy on Multiple Channels, →ISBN

   With the aim of moving toward our subsequent discussion of the driving forces behind mass indebtedness, however, we might take things a little further by condensing the original work's detailed breakdown into two very broad causes of individual indebtedness.

   2015, Mark Horsley, The Dark Side of Prosperity: Late Capitalism’s Culture of Indebtedness, →ISBN

   Sheikh Mohammed is the driving force behind the transformation of Dubai into one of the great cities of the modern world: a hub for business and tourism, and the world's gateway to the Middle East.

   2015, Mohammed bin Maktoum, Flashes of Thought, →ISBN

   Marples, who later fled to Monaco to escape prosecution for fraud, was the driving force behind The Reshaping of British Railways report published on March 27 1963. Dr Richard Beeching [who wrote the report] was just his fall guy.

   2023 March 8, Howard Johnston, “Was Marples the real railway wrecker?”, in RAIL, number 978, page 50

   Synonyms: spearhead

2. The force that causes something to move or a physical process to occur.

   Diffusing particles experience a drift motion in addition to random diffusion, when an external driving force is applied.

   2007, Helmut Mehrer, Diffusion in Solids, →ISBN, page 178

   2 more examples

   The total driving force is the sum of two forces: an electrical force (e.g. the negative potential in the cell tends to pull in positively charged ions) and a diffusion force (based on the concentration gradient) (fig. 3-5).

   2013, Nicholas Sperelakis, Physiology and Pathophysiology of the Heart, →ISBN, page 67

   The ions transport through the fuel cell electrolytes under the influence of both electrical potential gradient and concentration gradient as the driving forces.

   2016, Shripad T. Revankar, Pradip Majumdar, Fuel Cells: Principles, Design, and Analysis, →ISBN, page 277