Claytronics: Building Matter from Microscale Robots Today, computing engages a user’s senses of sight and hearing through video and audio devices whose effects the user must integrate into his or her mind. Suppose that electronic media could offer users an active form of original information that would fully integrate sight and sound and add the […]
Referees may soon have a new way of determining whether a football team has scored a touchdown or gotten a first down. Dr. Ricketts and his colleagues, in collaboration with Disney Research, have developed a system that can track a football in three-dimensional space using low-frequency magnetic fields. >> Read More
Problem representation relates to the fact that how we see or conceptualize a problem defines how we try to solve it. Solving difficult, high-impact problems requires finding a representation of the problem that is solvable. If you are not able to solve the problem that has been presented to you, the answer may be to […]
Invention vs. innovation — Many people mistake invention for innovation or believe that every invention is an innovation, but this is not exactly accurate. The key difference to understand is that invention is about the creation of something new, without regard for value. You can come up with a new idea or product and even […]
If you lived somewhere where you made bad wine, would it have occurred to you to make champagne instead? Probably not. But that’s what innovation is: taking sour lemons and inventing lemonade. Consider the real-life history of champagne. Champagne refers to the chalky soil that was very dry and barren. Most people don’t realize that […]
What is the difference between disruptive innovation and solving keystone problems? Keystone problems are the things that must be overcome so that companies who have a nascent technology can actually gain the market through that technology. The rate at which some technologies get better may be faster than what the market needs. Simplicity, convenience, accessibility, […]
The Rubber-Band Principle basically teaches us to discover unseen opportunities for value to create innovations that touch our daily lives The rubber-band principle comes from the story of how Kraft macaroni and cheese originated. James Lewis Kraft, the founder of Kraft Foods, found a salesman in St. Louis who was selling boxes of pasta with […]
The Key to Creativity in Innovation is Flexible Thinking All of the theories and techniques at how to be more creative have one overriding approach. If you can understand that theme, it makes it a lot easier to understand how to utilize creativity techniques and skills. All of the techniques try to have you do […]
Understanding the Role of Innovation in Business Acceleration Growth in any organization is dependent upon the ability to innovate. Innovative companies boast 10 times higher return on R&D and 2.5 times higher sales, for instance, than their non-innovative competitors. Despite that fact, however, less than half of all companies achieve their innovation goals and benchmarks. […]
Why Sometimes Solutions Aren’t Apparent Until Faced with the Problem On the descent from 20,000 ft during a recent business trip to New York City, I had a beautiful view of the Manhattan and the Hudson and East Rivers. As we were descending, I thought about the different perspective Sully Sullenberger had when he made […]
