Additional Midterm Topics

Question 1

Inventing

Best way to become better at inventing is to ____________.

Answer 1

Practice inventing.

Question 2

Inventing

Keys to creativity and innovation

Answer 2

Factors emphasized in class:

• Diverse outlook: Important to understand the problem clearly and look at it from different perspectives
• Self-confidence: Need confidence in your ability to come up with ideas
• Deep conviction and persistence: Good inventors stick with their ideas until they figure it out. Believe what they’re doing is important.

Additional inventor characteristics (toolbox):

• Knowledge about how things work from a practical standpoint
• Scientific knowledge
• Knowledge about intellectual property
• Ability to prototype, test, experiment, refine
• Manufacturing knowledge
• Startup mechanism knowledge
• Marketing
• Managing skills for project

Question 3

Radio

Video Notes

Answer 3

Marconi

• First trans-Atlantic radio transmission
• Nobel prize for telegraph tech
• 180 ships were part of his business (Morse code)

de Forest

• Over 300 patents
• Grid Audion
  
  • Vacuum tube - first device which could amplify electrical signal
• Frequency amplification

Sarnoff

• Marconi Wireless, and then,
• led Radio Corporation of America
• Pioneered television

Armstrong

• 42 patents
• Regenerative circuit
• Superheterodyne receiver system
• FM radio with better signal clarity

Question 4

IDEO

Shopping Cart Video

Answer 4

Key Design Features

• Took best elements of each - costs the same as regular cart
• Scanner to get prices of goods
• Stackable baskets
• Child seat like a roller coaster ride
• Wheels turn 90 degrees
• Leave cart and take a basket - treat cart as center for shopping
• Bags hung on hooks on cart’s frame
• Chose to take the value out of the cart (basket) to deter theft instead of adding things, decrease turnaround

Notes on Product Generation Process

• One conversation at a time
• Stay focused on topic
• Encourage wild ideas
• Defer judgement
• Build on ideas of others
  
  • Even if they’re bad you can lead it to something productive, like that exercise done in course last year
• “Enlightened trial and error exceeds over the idea of the lone genius”
• 3-5 teams and each is given a need area
  
  • Shopping, safety, checkout, finding what you’re looking for
• Without time constraints nothing would get done
• Ask for forgiveness rather than permission
• Fail often to succeed sooner
• Constructive chaos and clashing ideas

Question 5

Osborn’s Guide for Idea Generation

Postpone Judgement

Answer 5

• People are more likely to stay open for ideas
• Not even positive judgement.
• Too much screening of your own ideas, before stating, can have a less than optimal result as well.
• Don’t “shut down.”
• Sometimes it is helpful to admit, from the beginning, that a lot of the ideas generated will be “half baked.”

Question 6

Osborn’s Guide for Idea Generation

Strive for Quantity

Answer 6

• The more options that are generated, the higher the likelihood of finding an excellent solution.
• Striving for quantity is designed to take advantage of the natural relationship between quantity and quality observed in highly creative people.

Question 7

Osborn’s Guide for Idea Generation

Freewheel

Answer 7

• “Crazy ideas” suggested can trigger many other ideas that can lead to unusual possibilities with potential.
• Sometimes the wildest options serve as spring-boards for other new options generated by the same or different individuals.
• These new options w/potential will not be generated if wild options are held back because of internal judgement.
• “It is easier to tame a wild lion than to make a kitty roar.”
• Without a certain degree of “freewheeling”, the generated solutions will be quite standard, and not very innovative.
  
  • True for individual or group.

Question 8

Osborn’s Guide for Idea Generation

Seek combinations - build

Answer 8

• Build on each other’s ideas
• Need to have an environment of trust, where building on ideas is allowed.

Question 9

Inventing

What can it lead to?

Answer 9

• Could be basis of a product or company.
• Could improve quality of life
  
  • efficiency,
  • health,
  • communication,
  • transportation, etc.
• May be an incremental but important improvement.
  
  • Most patents are like this.
  • These are easier to implement.
  • The infrastructure is there.
  • Society is usually ready to accept and adapt them and usually they readily buy into them.
• May be a revolutionary idea, like the laser, the transistor, the light bulb.
  
  • These can change whole fields
  • Start new companies
  • But the infrastructure may not be there to start with and it may take awhile for the profit to be realized.

Question 10

Class Brainstorm

What was the method used?

Answer 10

Brainwriting.

Papers transferred from center to individuals with ideas on them.

Question 11

Class Brainstorm

How to pick the right solution?

Answer 11

Depends on barriers of entry:

• Rules, laws, regulations
• Social acceptances
• Cost of making the idea work
• Skills available
• Workforce available
• Sources and costs of materials

Question 12

Inventing

Generation vs. Critique

Answer 12

Separate your idea generation section from your critique and analysis.

Question 13

Inventing

Types of Ideas

Answer 13

• Ideas requiring extensive research (months to years).
• Product design ideas.