driving force

driving force (plural driving forces)

1. Impetus; a person or thing that causes, stimulates, or motivates something to happen.
   • 2003, Manja Ledderhos, Strategy on Multiple Channels, →ISBN:

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

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

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

   • 2015, Mark Horsley, The Dark Side of Prosperity: Late Capitalism’s Culture of Indebtedness, →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, Mohammed bin Maktoum, Flashes of Thought, →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.

2. The force that causes something to move or a physical process to occur.
   • 2007, Helmut Mehrer, Diffusion in Solids, →ISBN, page 178:

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

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

     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).

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

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