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Steps to Teaching Yourself

I work in research and I’ve learned that one of the most important skills the best researchers have is that they teach themselves, they dont wait to be taught.  When in graduate school most scientists are taught this.  Often material that was never lectured on is required learning and will be tested on. I once took a course where the professor said to read such and such a paper and be ready to be tested on it, no lectures, no review session, he basically said “teach yourself this material.”  At the other extreme, when kids are in first grade every item is lectured on, the abc’s are taught, repeated, given for mandatory homework, rehearsed with quizzes then lectured again until the child grasps the information.

Being willing to teach yourself new things is a wonderful attitude to have in adulthood. Things like teaching yourself to parent better, teaching yourself to manage money better, teaching yourself how to repair or remodel your home or teaching yourself a new principle from the bible are good examples of things we should be learning on going.

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.  ~Attributed to Harry S Truman

Learning to teach yourself may require two changes,

  1. become willing to learn, are you teachable? or are you good to go and know everything you need for life?, and
  2. make an effort to be your own teacher and not wait for someone else to teach you.

The first is really an attitude change the second requires a work ethic, teaching yourself takes effort, its not fun sometimes, I just want others to teach me something rather than learn it slowly.  It might require we read a book or many books, it might require taking a course.

2 Timothy 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Teaching yourself is sign of maturity.

What are the things in life that you wish you knew how to do? or knew how to do better? why not teach yourself?

What have you taught yourself that you are glad you did?

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Just Make It Work: A Good Product Innovation Process

The Best Product Innovation Process

 

I have a few patents, I think 4 or 5. I work in technology development R&D and one of my primary functions is to generate intellectual property. We invent for our company and receive a salary in return. But the best product innovation process I’ve seen I call “Just Make It Work”. It comes natural to the best innovators. Dependence on formal process is not what you want to look for. The best inventors just have the ability to make it work. Make the idea develop in to an invention and business through hard work, intuition and intelligence (in that order).

A good patent is an idea and a method to bring that idea to market. Its foolish to patent an idea that cannot be brought to market. If you have ever wanted to invent here are six tips to help you.

Six Tip To Help You To Invent

  1. Have the right attitude, if you see an unmet need think “what can I create to meet this need?” Be optimistic. Don’t think for a minute that you can not invent, everyone has ideas and anyone can have an inventive idea. We should also get help from others to help with the process.
  2. Always be Learning, we must learn and study if we are going to invent. This is why some of the best inventors are known to be intelligent. However, intelligence is not a requirement, everyone can be continuously learning.  Learning will help us to explore areas where new gadgets, processes or concepts can solve a problem in a unique way. Learning constantly will cause new ideas to emerge. Always be learning what others have done, we may think we have a great idea but did someone else have the same idea 20 years ago? We should search our field for existing patents to see if we are the first or 101st person to have this idea.
  3. Have many ideas, all the time, ideas, ideas, ideas, write them down, most will be lousy but some will be great.  Most believe that that Plato first said “necessity is the mother of invention.”  For example, have you ever struggled with threading a needle? check out this link? why didn’t I think of this?
  4. Share ideas with others, this may seem counter intuitive but they are likely to make the idea and patent even better. Be generous if they contribute to the idea. A patent shared is far better than no patent at all.
  5. Develop methods to implement ideas, this is the step where we actually get to make things happen. Where we get to create.  This is the time when good inventors wont take “No” for an answer. There should be a method to manufacture ideas or systems that we want to patent. And it is our job to discover and document that method.  Having an ‘I will make this work’ attitude is important. Those of us who are easily discouraged when faced with obstacles will have a tough time inventing.
  6. Get legal help, we eventually need access to patent attorneys to file, there are companies that can help anyone patent relatively cheaply.

Remember, keeping ideas secret is a great way to kill them.

Have you ever had an idea that you thought about patenting?

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Social Media with Research and Development

Social media is not only a time waster for your 15 year old, it can also be a tool to enhance the effectiveness of your organization.  With the inspiration of Twitter, the microblog platform can offer most organizations a tool to collaborate, share accomplishments and reduce the time and money spent on R&D.  As a scientist, engineer, technician or manager tackles an innovation project they begin to learn.  They learn through studying publications, through studying textbooks, through experimentation, through convestations with others in the field, through making purchases and through brainstorming sessions with subject matter experts.  The learnings can be highly technical or simple market facts.  Regardless of what is learned, the learning itself is a necessary step for the organization to succefully innovate and penetrate their target market. The more people in the organization the greater the need to share learnings.  This is typically done through periodic reporting to the supervisor and sometimes through collaboration meetings

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I can see an opportunity for individuals in an organization to teach others via a twitter like microblog internal to each organization.  Perhaps call it a Learning Blog or a Teaching Blog, whatever it is named, the learning blog application holds the potential to reduce money spent on learning by much faster organization-wide teaching and learning.  Yammer is one such tool that can be used for this, microsoft recently purchased Yammer and pland to incoporate this concept into their operating platform.

The R&D learning blog (if used!) can reduce siloed learning that is so common in large organizations.  Incentives may be necessary to kick start participation.

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