The Era of Young Innovators: Looking Beyond Universities To Source Talents 86
New submitter billylo writes "Tech heavy industries are constantly looking for new sources of innovations. But where are the best place to find them? Increasingly, businesses are looking beyond universities and source ideas from savvy high schoolers. Cases in point: High school programming team finished in the Top 5 of MasterCard's NXT API challenge (3rd one down the list) last weekend in Toronto; Waterloo's Computing Contest high-school level winners [PDF] tackled complex problems like these [PDF]; the FIRST robotics competition requires design, CAD, manufacturing and programming all done by high schoolers. Do you have other good examples on how to encourage high schoolers to become young innovators?
Do you have any other successful examples?"
Re:of course (Score:5, Interesting)
Innovation is one thing, it's a completely different thing to create business from it. We are missing out a lot of good innovations because the ideas get stifled or the innovator gets pushed down because the investors thinks that it's a bad idea. (The idea may be bad for their business, so therefore they don't promote it)
Re:This is bound to come up... (Score:4, Interesting)
Kids like that are a good example of what can be done by high schoolers. They also show that universities are very useful. Jack did his work with a professor, based on published work by several other professors and students. It's because guys like George Whitesides and Charlie Johnson publish and talk about their work that he was able to pick it up. Working in a well run lab is an inherently collaborative experience, and experiencing it early can be very useful.
Benefits flow both ways. Sometimes in academic groups, there's such a focus on doing funded research that people forget to try things just because they should. Young scientists are very good at pushing the older guys to keep trying out new stuff.