Nurturing your child to be innovators in the 21st Century

Inventors are not born. They are nurtured. What would you feel if your kid came up with an idea, product or service that would change the lives of millions? Pretty amazing right? 

Think along the lines of the creators of the tissue paper, zipper, safety pin, radio, TV, the humble toothpick... and the list goes on and on...

How do we inspire our young ones to become inventors and motivate them to have a vested interest in making their world a better and more creative place?

Here are some ways in which ideas are formed and nurtured:

The Piggy Back
Often several people will invent the same thing at the same time. Why? Because something already existed that inspired the inventors. For example, the Internet, inspired many inventors to come up with social media sites. Facebook and Twitter are two inventions that exist because of the Internet.

The Incubator
Some ideas need time to “cook”.  Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, started thinking about how to organize files on his computer ten years before he invented the WWW. By 1990, he had how invented HTML, the “language” of the WWW, figured out how to give each website its own address, and created the first web browser.

Reinventing The Wheel
Many inventors realize that existing inventions can be used to perform other tasks. Johannes Guttenberg, inventor of the printing press in the 1400s, incorporated a machine called the screw press that crushed grapes to make wine in his new invention.

Happy Accidents
“Happy Accidents” are invention ideas or discoveries that are made when people least expect them. Many things we use and enjoy today came about this way. Post-it Notes, ice cream cones, chocolate chip cookies, and even potato chips are a few examples!

The "Aha! Moment", otherwise known as the "Eureka! Moment"
This involves first being stuck on an idea and then relaxing your mind to let the solution surface. This can happen at the oddest times – in the bath, during a walk or even watching the clouds roll by. Scientist Albert Einstein was riding a bus when he came up with the idea of “special relativity”, to solve a theory he had been working on for years about space and time.

Coming up on the JLPC calendar is the "Young Innovators" workshop series (July to Sept 2013) which aims to inspire kids from 6yrs to 12yrs to become innovators in the 21st Century. Details coming up real soon! Watch out for it!