Innovation

The Maker Movement was made in the USA, but it’s now gone global, to dozens of countries, encouraging people to (re)discover the joy and satisfaction that comes from making something with your own hands, to go from just consuming to also producing. But what if you’ve already been making for decades, as the factory of the world? Chinese makers embrace the fun and creativity in the movement; the government sees it as a tool to increase China’s innovation and drive economic growth. They want to add structure and control. But what if unstructured fun is a path to innovation? The Maker Movement was made in the USA, but it’s now gone global, to dozens of countries, encouraging people to (re)discover the joy and satisfaction that comes from making something with your own hands, to go from just consuming to also producing. But what if you’ve already been making for decades, as the factory of the world? Chinese makers embrace the fun and creativity in the movement; the government sees it as a tool to increase China’s innovation and drive economic growth. They want to add structure and control. But what if unstructured fun is a path to innovation?

At the Biodesign Challenge, science was turned over to the artists, who were asked to imagine what a future biotech product might look like.

The screen technology used in e-readers like the Amazon Kindle was conceived by undergraduates at MIT. It’s all about using positive and negative charge.

Robots do a lot of things for us — build cars, make computer chips and more. But should we give them life and death power, and allow them to perform surgery?

What do turkey vultures, bullet trains, cockroaches and robots have in common? They’ve all served as inspiration for human innovation.