Famous innovators from the past have included people like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Buckminster Fuller, but innovation is alive and well in the present.

Take, for example, someone like Ann Makosinski, who designed a flashlight powered by body heat when she was 15, or Shubham Banerjee, who, at 12, used a Lego Mindstorms kit to create a machine that prints in Braille, a tactile writing system used by people who are blind.

Innovation: It’s in Your Hands

If you’ve ever tried to make something work better in your own environment, such as in your home or at school, you’ve already taken the first steps toward becoming an innovator.

The truth is, anyone who understands the innovation process can become an innovator. Get ready to learn about The Henry Ford Model I’s Actions of Innovation, and how you can apply them to create useful innovations of your own.

Introduction

Let’s review what innovation means. We’ll use some examples, starting with bicycles.

Guess the Innovation

Review: What is Innovation?

You’re going to see three different artifacts from Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation. Guess what makes each one an improvement on an existing product.

Borden’s Eagle Brand Condensed Milk, 1900-1915

In the 1850s, Gail Borden found a way to reduce milk to a condensed form and preserve it for later use.

Take a guess: Why was this an important innovation?

Select one of the two options below.

First Tri-Color, Four-Directional Traffic Signal, 1920

This was the first illuminated traffic signal with three light colors: red, green, and amber.

Take a guess: How did this signal improve on previous ones?

Select one of the two options below.

Amana Radarange Microwave Oven, 1975

The Radarange microwave oven was first introduced in 1967. It was 15 inches tall and 23 inches wide.

Take a guess: What makes this microwave innovative?

Select one of the two options below.

These innovations all made significant contributions to existing products and addressed a need:

Condensed milk in cans could be transported easily and lasted longer than fresh milk.
Three-color traffic signals made it safer to drive.
Compact microwave ovens were affordable and could fit neatly on a countertop.

As you learn more about innovation, you’ll start to understand how innovators arrive at their ideas and bring them to life.

As you saw in the previous activity, sometimes even a small innovation can have a profound impact on our everyday lives. If more people learned to innovate, we would see more positive change around the world.

Fortunately, the process of innovation is not a mystery—it can be learned. Model I breaks it down into five Actions of Innovation that can help you discover, develop, and refine ideas. Think of the Actions as a set of guideposts rather than a strict step-by-step process. It often makes sense to start with Uncover, but the Actions do not have to follow a particular order.

Take a minute and draw the following Actions of Innovation diagram in your Design Journal. Write down a description for each Action using your own words.

Select the Actions

to learn more.

Optimize

The feedback you gather from testing can then be used to improve your design. You’ll most likely need to repeat the prototyping and testing process a few times to optimize your solution. This is also known as iteration.

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Uncover

To uncover means to connect with a group of people to identify their needs and develop insights into their situation. These people will be the users of your product, process, or service.

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Design

Based on the problem you’ve defined, you’ll brainstorm solutions and create a prototype to test your chosen solution. A prototype can take many forms, including a drawing, cardboard construction, or process map. You’ll want to test it with the users you identified in the Uncover phase.

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Define

Once you have an understanding of their needs, you can use your newly gained perspective to define what the problem is and why it’s a problem. Your goal is to provide scope and clarity to the problem so that the solution you design meets a true need.

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Implement

This is where you take the tested prototype to market. You’ll distribute or sell your product, or make your process or service available to people beyond the initial test group. Through implementation you’ll uncover new insights that help you further optimize the solution.

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Innovation Doesn’t Occur by Accident

Uncover, Define, Design, Optimize, and Implement are essential to innovation. The Actions do not guarantee success, but they can increase your chances. It’s important to understand that failure is part of innovation. As a result, you will likely have to repeat some of the Actions several times before producing the desired outcome.

“There is nothing magical or mysterious about my methods, and what I learned to do others can learn to do.”

Luther Burbank

Innovator who introduced more than 800 plant varieties to American agriculture

Let’s take a closer look at how the Actions work, starting with Uncover and Define.

Uncovering Needs

One of the keys to developing an innovative idea is to learn about the needs of a group of people.

Shubham Banerjee, for instance, learned that Braille printers cost thousands of dollars; as a result they’re inaccessible to many people who are blind.

Based on this need, he developed a Braille printer that could be built for a fraction of the typical cost.

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Defining the Problem

Ann Makosinski discovered that a friend of hers in the Philippines needed a source of light to study after dark. This need extends to many people in developing countries who can’t afford electricity or batteries.

The problem could be defined as follows: Children can’t study after dark, so their schoolwork suffers. How might we provide a sustainable light source that doesn’t require electricity or batteries?

The solution Ann developed was a flashlight powered by the thermal energy of humans.

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Select Uncover and Define to see examples.

The design of a solution should be based on a thorough understanding of the problem. Once there is a prototype of the solution, it needs to be optimized based on user feedback.

In the following video you’re going to meet Jessica O. Matthews, who identified a similar problem that Ann did but developed a different solution. As you watch the video, make note of how Jessica applied the Actions.

Designing the Solution

Jessica designed a soccer ball that harnesses kinetic power using a pendulum-like mechanism. The power charges a lithium battery to create light.

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Optimizing the Design

Jessica and her team optimized the Soccket, which was in its seventh generation at the time the video was made. One such optimization strategy was to drop the ball from a tall building as a way to conduct impact testing.

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After you’ve watched the video, think about the following questions:

What was the solution Jessica designed?
How was she optimizing the solution?

Select Design and Optimize to see answers to the questions.

Once a viable prototype is developed, an innovator needs to step beyond design and start thinking like a businessperson or entrepreneur. This includes figuring out:

How the business should be organized to connect the customer with the innovation.
The tools and resources needed to make and sell the product or service.
How the product or service will be advertised, and where the funding will come from.

Select Implement to see an example.

Implementing the Solution

Jessica Matthews, for instance, founded a company to market and sell the Soccket. The company continued to gather feedback from users and customers to help improve the product.

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Innovators like Jessica Matthews must be creative in coming up with unique approaches to power generation. But an innovative idea can’t simply be creative—it also has to be realistic. In the real world, there are always criteria and constraints that determine if a solution is feasible.

In the case of the Soccket, the design solution had to supply sustainable, battery-powered lighting so that children could do their homework at night. This was one of the criteria for the product.

There were also constraints that limited what could work as a solution. For example, these children were located in underdeveloped parts of the world where there was no easy access to electricity. So, the solution had to be able to function “off the grid.”

Criteria and constraints should be identified as you define the problem in the innovation process.

In your Design Journal, write down the definitions of criteria and constraint.

Here’s a chance for you to try the following Actions: Define, Design, and Optimize. You’ll need to quickly devise a solution based on the needs of a small town named Omitonia.

Text alternative for “Get the Omitonians to School”

After you’ve gone through the activity, respond to the following questions in your Design Journal:

What problem did the Omitonians face?
What was the solution?
What were the criteria (standards of success) and constraints (limitations)? How did they impact your solution?
How did you optimize your design?

More on…

Let's revisit some of the innovations you've seen. As you learn more about these products, think about how the innovators might have used the innovation process to develop their ideas and designs.

The Hollow Flashlight

The Braigo

The Dymaxion House

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If you’re curious to know how Ann Makosinski built a flashlight powered by body heat, watch the Innovation Nation video, Hollow Flashlight Girl.

Discover how Shubham Banerjee turned his Braille printer, known as the Braigo, from a Lego-based prototype into a market-ready product.

Remember Buckminster Fuller? Take another look at the Dymaxion House and reflect on how he demonstrates the Actions of Innovation.

Draw an Actions of Innovation diagram in your Design Journal and label it “Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House.” Then, jot down your answers to the following questions next to the relevant Actions:

What need did Buckminster Fuller uncover?
What problem did he define? What criteria and constraints did he work with?
What solution did he design?
Did he optimize the design?
Did he implement the design?

You should now be able to explain the essential actions of the innovation process to anyone who asks. When you face an innovation challenge, you should be ready to talk about how you might:

Uncover
Define
Design
Optimize
Implement

You’ll gain a deeper understanding of each Action of Innovation as you continue in this course—and soon, you’ll be able to apply them whenever you have ideas and insights of your own.

If it helps, use the acronym UDDOI to remember the Actions. You can also use U D2O It, which looks like “You Do It”!

Actions of Innovation

Innovation: It’s in Your Hands

Introduction

Guess the Innovation

Review: What is Innovation?

Borden’s Eagle Brand Condensed Milk, 1900-1915

First Tri-Color, Four-Directional Traffic Signal, 1920