News

You can’t harvest what you don’t seed. Why the dismantling of foundational federal research funding threatens the bedrock of American breakthrough innovation.

Contrary to popular belief, serendipity does not have to be accidental. It can be planned, prepared for, and thereby enhanced. How a prepared, open mind turns unexpected results into breakthrough innovation.

Some of the most common—and stupidest—advice in innovation is that you must embrace risk. Every step of the innovation process should be about knowing, because knowledge is what kills risk.

Certainty is the antithesis of humility. When certainty replaces humility, innovation dies and disasters begin. Why humans and autonomous silicon minds both need to learn how to doubt.

Houston-based start-up Casimir has officially blasted out of stealth mode with a heavily oversubscribed $12 million seed round. Their goal? To commercialize a semiconductor chip that generates persistent electrical power straight from quantum vacuum fields—completely eliminating the need for batteries, fuel, or a charging grid.

In innovation, progress and the right progress are not the same thing. Learn from the eVTOL industry's failures.

In a gold rush, most of the prospectors go broke. Why “hot” innovation is the riskiest kind, and how to spot the unglamorous breakthroughs that actually change everything.

What if we told you trees could predict the future? A recent study suggested they could, but closer inspection reveals the hidden danger of falling in love with a good story over rigorous science.

Innovation today rarely lives in a single discipline. The breakthrough product, the elegant solution, the thing that finally works—more often than not, it sits at the intersection of mechanical systems, electronics, a...

Everyone Wants Innovation. Few Companies Staff for It.

We recently came across a piece in Big Think that stopped us in our tracks. Writer Eric Markowitz visited Kaikado, a tea caddy workshop in Kyoto that has been in operation since 1875. When Markowitz asked a young appr...

In our last two blogs, we explored what insight is—that unmistakable rush of sudden clarity, positive emotion, and effortless certainty—and what insight does to us, from sharpening our memory to expanding our appetite...