Category Archives: Innovation

This is something that, when introduced to a group, is considered new by the members of the group. This is irrespective of how long or short the innovation has actually been in existence or recognized by other groups, societies, or social systems.

Documenting Ideas

Something that is often overlooked in our conversations about inventing awesome stuff, is the idea of documentation. This is easy to understand. Everyone is excited about the doing. The process of creating something. Quite naturally, people are less excited about the paperwork associated with the task of documentation—the drudgery of recording what has been done. Continue reading

Dave Gross at VerticalLeap

Vertical Leap

Several club members attended the April 15th Vertical Leap meeting. It was a great event. Vertical Leap has been around in another incarnation before, and the reinvigoration of it was the brain child of Dave Sanders. Dave is the president and co-founder of Avenue 80, a software development company here in town. Dave describes Vertical Leap as a get together for “founders” who are entrepreneurial-spirited folks willing to share ideas in an open forum. Continue reading

Get Your Search Together!

When most people search the Web they simply type a few words or a sentence into Google and see what comes back. This works a lot of the time, but if you are searching a complex topic and need some precision, there are other techniques to use. Conducting Web searches on complex topics such as inventions can seem like an intimidating task. Fortunately, they are not as bad as they may appear. By organizing information a little bit before searching the Web, the task becomes much easier. Continue reading

WarriorHack Welcome

Indiana Tech’s WarriorHack

Today’s article is a report about the recent WarriorHack at IndianaTech. We are pleased to have Mark Richter join LightSwitch! as a guest author. Mark is the Executive Director of the Center for Creative Collaboration (C3), which is the organization that put the WarriorHack together. The C3 also sponsors the Fort Wayne Inventors Club by offering its offices for our meeting space. Needless to say, we love the C3. Now, without further delay, here is Mark’s report…


The first annual WarriorHack took place over a 24-hour period beginning at 6:00 pm on February 20, 2015 and ending at 6:00 pm on February 21. The event took placed in the Multi-Flex Auditorium and Theater on Indiana Tech’s Fort Wayne campus. Most of the attendees were from the Fort Wayne area, but some came from as far as Detroit, Indianapolis, and Louisville. The event was kicked off by a welcome from Bill Soards, President of AT&T Indiana. Continue reading

mLibraries Pilot Program

Pilot Studies

Small independent inventors have several cost effective tools available for refining ideas and preventing the waste of limited resources. We have already addressed inexpensive prototyping, which is one such tool, in an earlier article. Pilot studies, which are sometimes referred to as pilot tests, pilot experiments, or pilot programs, are another method to explore an idea. Learning the flaws in an idea early can prevent the waste of time and money later. Continue reading