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 [...]]]> 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 until World War II until significant life-saving results were achieved and the drug was being mass-produced. Read the Wikipedia entry for penicillin; dozens of people had a hand in taking the important steps, which tells me that hundreds probably worked on it. This doesn’t sound too accidental to me.

One can read all about Spencer Silver and Art Fry as the inventors of the Post-it note. Yet, as far as I can read Silver invented a low-tack re-positionable adhesive and Fry applied that solution to a bookmark.  The story goes that Silver was actually trying to develop a very strong adhesive, but I have trouble finding a good source for that part of the story.

Read more about the development of the Post-it and you’ll find more about its far from accidental development. Silver thought his adhesive would make for a great spray or coating, but those ideas weren’t recognized as marketable by the company.  Thanks to the promotion of the practice “bootlegging” by the 3M Company, which was the encouragement of people stepping out of their own work and departments to find out what others in the company were doing, Art Fry found an application for the adhesive. He thought it could be a good solution for keeping bookmarks in his hymnal book at church.  It took another few years of internal promotion at 3M, another five years to perfect the product specifications and manufacture it. Ultimately, this story of ingenuity has led to over 4000 Post-it Brand products today.

Let’s make sure that young people don’t learn about these types of developments as strictly fortuitous or accidental. Let’s encourage them to look deeper into things to instead find that they are the results of hard work over long periods of time by many different people of various backgrounds.

Update: 2/22/11 – Here’s an interesting article on HowStuffWorks.com about ten “accidental” inventions.

During Edison’s era, he made innovation happen in a unique way for that time. Having people of [...]]]> 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 various backgrounds, experience, and expertise became the standard for research and development in industry and you can see the evidence of that in the iPad. While how exactly this product was developed and by whom remains an industry secret and a mystery to most all of us, one thing is certain: I imagine that hundreds of people had a hand in it’s development.

I imagine that the following types of people were involved in creating the iPad:

– Industrial Designers

– Engineers

– Marketing Professionals

– Manufacturers

– Software Developers

– Other industry professionals that had experience with original devices that failed in the market (reminder: iPad wasn’t the first of this concept)

Our young people need to learn about ingenuity is how it is applied by teams regardless of scale or market consciousness of a project. They need first hand experience being a team member as well as a team leader so they can begin to understand the dynamics of team work.

One interesting thing to me is how the credit for innovative products gets passed by the public. People seem to credit Edison alone for the invention of the incandescent light bulb. Yet, today the “inventor” of the iPad is Apple. I wonder if over time we’ll remember the companies as the inventors of things rather than the individuals the way we used to.

The other day I took my five-year-old son over to basketball practice, which happens to take place at the school [...]]]> 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 he goes to every day.  This is always a big event for the family and we usually take two cars just for comfort’s sake as we now have three children.  As we were leaving the building and headed toward our car I started wondering about my son’s sense of direction. Had he developed it yet? How far could he get in his thinking this way? Could he direct me which way to drive and turn in order to get us all the way home (which is maybe a half-mile or so with just a few turns)? Does he know “the best way” to get home? Could he possibly know alternative ways to get home?

So, after we got ourselves and our things packed into the car and ready to go, I turned on the car and decided to ask him, “Can you tell me how to get home from here?” I just love the answer I got back.  He said, “Yea! You see that car right over there? That’s Mommy. Follow her.”

As we’ve fallen in our society toward schooling our children rather than educating them, we kill their creativity, as Sir Ken Robinson points out so nicely in this TED talk. As my friend, author, informal educator, and former engineer, Harry Roman says, “we tend to cure curiosity of our children” rather than giving them experiences that are designed to encourage and develop it.  Though we’d like to think schools have overcome this, especially high schools, they have not.  Yes, it is true that schools and instructional practices are still so much like they always have been and are probably not too far from what you may remember.

Creative thinking is one of the cornerstones and keys to ingenuity and it takes time and experience to make sure our kids either don’t lose it in the first place or help them get it back.  To do this we have to provide coursework and experiences and activities to our kids that make sense and that is designed to develop creativity and ingenuity.

What are some other examples of being able to think like a kindergartner? What are some ways to teach older children to keep thinking like a kindergartner? What types of activities are best for developing creative thinking?