Innovation Journal
What is “innovation” really?
Why is the definition of innovation disputed? Or why are there so many definitions of Innovation? I believe the reason people have different definitions for innovation is people have different reasons for innovating so their definition changes based on the reasoning.
Read all of the definitions from this source. Each of the writers of these definitions is a business leader of some sort. Think about their perspectives.
After thinking about their perspectives and their definitions, which one resonates with you personally the most. Write this definition here: Very simply put, innovation is about staying relevant. We are in a time of unprecedented change. As a result, what may have helped an organization be successful in the past could potentially be the cause of their failure in the future. Companies need to adapt and evolve to meet the ever changing needs of their constituents.
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Look up the writer of this definition. See what you can learn about them.
Writer Name: Stephen Shapiro
What type of industry are they associated with? Post a picture of them. He is an author/innovation instigator.
What did they do/create/lead/innovate to become so successful? Stephen Shapiro cultivates innovation by showing leaders and their teams how to approach, tackle and solve their business challenges. Applying the knowledge he has accrued over decades in the industry, Stephen is able to see what others can’t: opportunities to improve innovation models and the cultures that support them. The first innovation opportunity Stephen spotted was the opportunity to innovate within his own life. Halfway through his 15-year tenure at Accenture, while co-leading the company’s business process re-engineering practice, he realized he no longer wanted to be responsible for people losing their jobs. So he did exactly the opposite by building Accenture’s thriving 20,000-person process and innovation practice focused on growth and job creation.
Knowing what you know about this person, what insights did you gain into their definition?
His definition of innovation was about staying relevant. He has talked and instructed thousands on how to do exactly that which has in turn made their business successful. He is all about success and you need to be relevant to be successful so that's what I took away from it all.
Worldwide Problems:
World Problems:
What are the three most pressing problems that the world needs to address for the poorer ½ of the worlds population according to Manoj. The three most pressing problems for the poorer half of the world is power, water, and health.
Collect at least six supporting pieces of data that describe these problems as you participate in the Billions in Change Ed. Puzzle? Half of the world doesn't have energy or only has energy for two to three hours in the day. We are pumping 25 billion pounds of matter is being pumped into the air every year. The poor have stayed poor because they have no energy and power. The poor have stayed poor because they lack water also. Electricity has been the biggest enable and we have kept half of the world out of it. People are taking fresh water out of the environment which causes droughts.
What is Manoj’s main question when evaluating an invention? Is it useful?
What is Covid-19? It is a virus that originated in China that has spread across the world and is affecting many people.
How bad is it? According to the CDC, there are about 213,144 cases in the US. The total deaths in the US are around 4,513.
How does it affect the host? People may be sick with the virus for 1 to 14 days before developing symptoms. The most common symptoms of corona virus disease (COVID-19) are fever, tiredness, and dry cough. Most people (about 80%) recover from the disease without needing special treatment. More rarely, the disease can be serious and even fatal. Older people, and people with other medical conditions (such as asthma, diabetes, or heart disease), may be more vulnerable to becoming severely ill.
Describe a sub-problem that is being created by this virus: Doctors and health professionals are running out of masks to protect themselves form Covid-19 and other viruses and diseases when at work.
Innovations for the Covid-19: Health professionals, designers, and engineers are banding together to solve the problem of a shortage of facial protection. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyCVrmUfimc, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNjpH5lBZ8w, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0rx6pq7j6c
Personal Frustrations (March 26-March 31):
Day 1: I’m mad about teachers posting new assignments later into the week. I’m mad that my mouse for my computer changes sensitivity super easily.
Day 2: I'm frustrated trying to watch a video but it's hard to tell what is going on because my screen is cracked. I'm frustrated about my folder with work in it is overflowing and broken because my teacher has given so much work.
Day 3: I hate when I'm on a run and old people like shriek at me saying stay six feet away. Your not going to get the virus when I pass you from over six feet away for about half a second. I'm frustrated about having to sit in my room for hours on end with no company.
Day 4: My water heater stopped working and that was frustrating. I'm frustrated with having to do yard work every two days.
Day 5: I'm frustrated that my trampoline keeps getting covered with leaves every time I want to go on it. I'm frustrated with a video game because it banned for a week for no reason.
Inventions already created by InvenTeams:
Use the years I have assigned to you below for your research:
https://lemelson.mit.edu/teams/inventeam
2019-2017
Chanel
Sayj K
Zachary
Cody
Owen
2016-2014
Jason
Lilian
Dailyn A
Toren A
Aaron
2013-2011
Caitlyn A
Sorrells Jr., Deondre L
Strozier, Ja'Kobe O
Sweeny, Alexandria E
Myah
2010-2008
Thompson, Veronica L
Triplett Jr., Bryant
Turner, Caleb A
Worley, Quinn A
2007-2005
Abram, Brandon
Adams, Marcus
Anderson, Cameron
Carmichael, Aris Z
2019, 2004-2003
Cooper, Scott A
Davis, Elliott C
Hill, Taylor T
Smith, Makiyah
Williams, Drew A
Complete this table for three InvenTeams. One who was designed for a single individual, one that was designed for a localized problem, and one that was for an international problem.
Single Individual Beneficiary
InvenTeam Year
InvenTeam (name or school)
Problem the device aims to solve (a 1-2 complete sentence description)
Who is the beneficiary of this product/solution?
Describe the solution (in paragraph form in your own words).
Find a link to a video that this team created describing their device.
Local/regional problem
InvenTeam Year
2017
InvenTeam (name or school)
Drew Charter School InvenTeam
Problem the device aims to solve (a 1-2 complete sentence description)
This device aims to prevent hot car deaths of children and pets. In the US there are 40+ hot car deaths of babies to toddlers each year.
Who is the beneficiary of this product/solution?
The device aims to be installed initially as an after market part in anyone’s car that would like to install it but the ultimate goal was to have car manufacturers install it as part of the initial manufacturing.
Describe the solution (in paragraph form in your own words).
This device was designed to us IR detection to sense the presence of the baby of the pet in the car using a temperature differential. Once the baby is detected, the device determines if there are users in the front seat of the car by reading the inputs from the weight sensors in the front seats. If the sensor determines the baby is left in the car alone it texts the owner of the car. If there is no response it determines the temperature within the car and if the temperature is above a threshold it will set off an aubible vicinity alarm that says “Danger, Danger, there is an occupant in this vehicle that needs help.” If the temperature of the vehicle rises or is on track to rise to a deadly level, the device can send a GPS location and emergency signal to the police.
Find a link to a video that this team created describing their device.
World Problem
InvenTeam Year
InvenTeam (name or school)
Problem the device aims to solve (a 1-2 complete sentence description)
Who is the beneficiary of this product/solution?
Describe the solution (in paragraph form in your own words).
Find a link to a video that this team created describing their device.
Proposed Invention Project
These words come directly from the InvenTeam Application:
Technological inventions must be useful; they improve the lives of the users or beneficiaries of the invention. Identify a problem you and a team of high school students want to address through creating an invention with a beneficiary. Successful applicants often focus on improving lives of people in their local communities. Inventions are also unique and do not currently exist. Your response should describe the context of the problem, who will benefit from a technological solution to the problem, and provide evidence you have identified a problem that can be solved in a unique way. One page maximum, PDF.
This information comes from this document that describes in greater detail what is required to be submitted and what will likely be accepted:
InvenTeam projects span many fields like assistive devices, environmental technologies, consumer goods, and wearable technology. Inventors are encouraged to identify important problems in their own communities. Local problems tend to highly motivate youth as they create technological solutions to improve the lives of others.
From these descriptions, I have created a checklist for you to evaluate your ideas. This program is HIGHLY competitive. There are about 45,000 high schools in the US, and only 15 Lemelson InvenTeams are selected! We must make sure we are meeting ALL of the recommended criteria to have the highest chance possible of being selected!
Invention/Problem Evaluation Checklist
Yes or No
Criteria
Is it useful? It improves the lives of users or beneficiaries of the Invention.
Identifies a specific beneficiary or beneficiary group.
Recommended: Focus on improving the lives of people in their own communities.
Does not currently exist.
Patent search practice:
Here is an example of the patent search we did for our initial InvenTeam idea:
Background Research Summary:
What is the problem and purpose of the project?
The Problem:
- A burglary occurs every 15 seconds in the United States, who leads the world in occurrence of burglaries.(Safewise)
- The highest rate of property crime occurs in the South region (which includes Atlanta and D.C.).There were 3438.8 property crimes per 100,000 inhabitants in the South region of the United States in 2010.(FBI)
- 60.5% of burglaries are forcible entry.(Ackerman Security)
- In 7% of all household burglaries, a household member experienced some form of violent victimization out of 3.7 million. This means that 259,000 burglaries were violent crimes. (source?)? Find the statistic that talks about how many of all burglaries to the front door.
The problem that we have chosen to address is security break-ins (I know this is what we have been calling our problem, but can we come up with better wording?).The invention we are proposing aims at preventing the intruder (not an intruder if there is not entry) from gaining access to the home. Because so many home invasions happen daily, this issue has a wide target audience and is extremely relatable. Therefore, an invention in this department will be considerably beneficial to the thousands of people who are burglarized a day. In one year alone, ______ people are burglarized with entry gained from the front door. ____ of those ___ people were able to actually contact and get a response from law enforcement during entry of the home.
Who will benefit from its completion?
Is the problem and the impact of the project on the problem quantified? (Quantify this--give a US statistic of number of forced entries by front door per year).
Patents I found that are related:
Searching: door sensing technology
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2016/0047145.html
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2008/0157541.html
Searching “Vibration Sensor Door”
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2013/0327142.html
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/JP2005044324A.html
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/JP2006185401A.html
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4282518.html
Searching “vibration sensor door alarm”
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2013/0335222.html **
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5469139.html
Searching “French Door Security”
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/9016736.html
Searching “French Door Lock”
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/DE202007003750U1.html
This week you will need to begin narrowing down your problems/ideas, and you by the end of the week you will each “Pitch” your problem/invention idea to the class on a Flipgrid.
Complete this checklist for as many of your invention ideas as you need to in order to find one that meets all of the criteria. If you do not have one, continue to generate ideas (this is not easy, and this is why we have been researching and generating ideas for a few weeks now). This means that you will need to do patent searches on each idea until you find one that you believe has not yet been invented. Once you have done that, please respond to these questions in your flipgrid:
Write your proposal here:
My Checklist for my selected problem:
Invention/Problem Evaluation Checklist
Yes or No
Criteria
Yes
Is it useful? It improves the lives of users or beneficiaries of the Invention.
Yes
Identifies a specific beneficiary or beneficiary group.
Yes, this could also help all teachers and we could start with Drew Teachers.
Recommended: Focus on improving the lives of people in their own communities.
Patent #CN109447563A
Does not currently exist.
What is the problem:
I am often forgetting to do or have inaccurate attendance records in the school environment. This is often do to the wide range of activities that occur within my classroom at the beginning of class.
Provide a thorough description, and if you can provide statistical supporting evidence.
According to my IC, I forget to do attendance 43% of the time. This means that students can be unaccounted for during these times. This affects me because it is part of my job to maintain correct attendance records, and this affects my students and families because they can be absent or tardy without their attendance being correctly noted. This also affects my school because we are evaluated by the district on how thoroughly we are doing attendance.
My Beneficiary:
Me, and eventually other teachers (students and families would also benefit).
How I propose my invention will work:
Voice Check In--student comes in and says good morning and the system recognizes their voice and accounts for them.
Patent Search:
Search:
voice attendance tracker
https://patents.google.com/patent/CN110738988A/en?q=voice+attendance+tracker&oq=voice+attendance+tracker Device to raise or lower temperature of water in a shower using your voice.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10402789B2/en?q=voice+attendance+tracker&oq=voice+attendance+tracker Device tracks attendance at meetings and in classes using the location of the device that the user / attendee is using.
voice attendance
https://patents.google.com/patent/CN109447563A/en?q=voice+attendance&oq=voice+attendance
This is the exact device I was proposing
All of the information below is the information that you will need to paste into your Innovation Journal. Paste it at the top.