Inventology

We often forget that even the most mundane objects -- like the sippy cup, the t-shirt cannon, and one of the most widely used hand sanitizers -- were invented by someone, to solve a particular problem. And even many inventors themselves, reflecting on how their ideas came to be, believe that their innovations came via a bolt from the blue, the result of a fabled "aha" moment. But as Pagan Kennedy argues, when it comes to bringing new devices and ideas into the world, we have more control over the creative process than we think. That "aha" moment is just one in a series of steps that can reliably produce an epiphany (even if it takes months or years to do so) and that lead to the tinkering, prototyping, and refinement that turn an idea into a full-fledged reality. In Inventology, the author of the New York Times Magazine's popular "Who Made That?" column uses eye-opening storytelling to reveal the steps that lead to innovation as never before, and shows us how to follow those steps ourselves. Kennedy teaches us how to see everything from big obstacles to everyday annoyances as solvable problems, and how to use a combination of pie-in-the-sky thinking and helpful constraints to arrive at an idea. Then, she shows us how to cross the divide between notion and solution. No algorithm can replace human ingenuity, but the step-by-step process Kennedy narrates can help us bolster our inventiveness, making this book a must-read for engineers, animators, entrepreneurs, artists, makers, tinkerers, and dreamers of all types.