Prolific Inventor's Secrets To Impacting World

Every day I wake up wanting to invent. - Robert Fischell, 2004 TED prize winner

What's the TED Prize? (Thanks to Diego at Metacool for the heads up on the prize.) "Each year we will honor three individuals who have shown that they can, in some way, positively impact life on this planet. We are looking for inventors and entrepreneurs, designers and artists, visionaries and mavericks, protectors and persuaders. Our goal is to honor and empower these people by connecting them to the formidable resources of the TED community."

Fischell, a medical device inventor whose ideas saves lives, says that there are two stages to any invention's feedback: "The first is 'It'll never work,' and the second is 'It was obvious all along.'"

To keep sharp, every year he gets together with other inventors for an innovation retreat. "We meet at some nice place and think about what the world could use." - University of Maryland OutlookOnline

Very, very interesting. What if this 'retreat' were global, virtual and constantly available? (Think Super Secret Startup.)

Deigo makes an excellent point:

Many people who create products claim to change people's lives, but which really only affect lifestyle. For example, an iPod is way cool, but it differs from my 80's Walkman only by degree. Robert Fischell creates things that fundamentally change lives. His work is the standard by which that statement must be judged.

Now, that's cool.

Comments

[Lion Kimbro]

"Very, very interesting. What if this 'retreat' were global, virtual and constantly available?"

Yeah- Strongly agree with the feeling.

I read a lot about classrooms trying to set up their own wiki. "But it doesn't work like that," I think in response. "Wiki work by Metcalf's law. The more people present, the more valuable it is. Why bound yourself by the semester, and bound yourself by the student membership?"

[Arthur Collins]

I believe the ideal invention empowers individuals to be better people. Not just healthier, wealthier, or wiser but to become more humanitarian, more community minded and there more interesting and useful individuals.

I once designed impliments of war but now create what I consider to be "humanitarian and useful tools". Unfortunately, even something as non-threatening and needed as a much improved means of desalinating sea water can cause concern within our government when it potentially empowers the "Wrong People". Our greatest need in this world at this time is civility toward each other.

Though condemned by some as potentially giving someone the capability of invading our privacy, I saw the need for a better screening method for airports as I stood in line for 45 min. waiting for my turn at the scanning station.

Unlike the new soft X-Ray technology, this proprietary technology ignores the individuals and only looks for "items of interest" moving through a wide area, there allowing this equipment residence time to isolate and define the specifics of those targets. This equipment looks for a specific radiometric signature of an item passing through a series of "conditioned electromagnetic fields". It currently can distinguish between the treads of the same sized and weight bolts and/or a variety of different types of fungi, viruses and bacteria. As such, it then will detect any dangerous or illict materials or items cateloged into this system. This should speed up our lines in the airports.