Understanding the “Designed World”

A young person’s ingenuity starts with a basic understanding that the “designed world,” comprised of the human designed and made products that fill our lives, does not appear magically. They are designed and made with a specific purpose in mind, to meet some specific human desire or need. In the case of commercial and industrial […]

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Serendipitous Inventions Are No Accident

Let’s set something straight for young people. Serendipitous inventions are not for the most part accidents. There is a lot more to the ingenuity behind their development.

In schools we might tell students about the accidental discovery of penicillin. But, while the effects were in fact fortuitously discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming, it wasn’t […]

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The Team Approach

I’m writing this post for the first time from my new iPad. This device and Harry Roman’s post about Edison and R&D got me thinking about the process of invention and how its changed over the past century.

During Edison’s era, he made innovation happen in a unique way for that time. Having people of […]

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Project Management

The processes of invention and project management are very similar, and both are very important to the world of business. An inventor manages a complex project or process involving manpower, money, resources, and time schedules, just like an engineer would do when they create a new product or design and construct a new building or […]

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Think Like a Kindergartner

One of the keys to developing one’s ingenuity is to give your mind the opportunity to think creatively and invoke the good ole’ KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) concept, or just think like a kindergartner.

The other day I took my five-year-old son over to basketball practice, which happens to take place at the school […]

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