Initiatives Supported in The United States
Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation within the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, which produces educational programs, popular and academic publications, exhibitions, podcasts and symposia about invention. The mission of the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center is to document, interpret, and disseminate information about invention and innovation; encourage inventive creativity in young people and; foster an appreciation for the central role of invention and innovation in the history of the United States. The Center frequently provides a multi-year focus on some aspect of how invention has influenced American society, such as its 2002 "Invention and the Environment" theme. Programs include a yearly symposium, presentations and guest speakers within and outside the National Museum of American History, and often the publication of a book detailing aspects of the topical focus. The Center also provides free curricular material to classrooms throughout the United States; organizes traveling museum exhibitions (such as "Invention at Play"); provides research opportunities and fellowships for scholars; and finds, obtains, and processes archival collections related to invention on behalf of the museum's Archives Center. These collections consist of the papers and materials documenting the work of past and current American inventors.
The Lemelson-MIT Program. This program promotes and celebrates the work of individual inventors through annual awards and competitions. Each year, it awards the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, the $100,000 Award for Sustainability, and the $30,000 Student Prize. In 2007, the program introduced two additional $30,000 student prizes to be awarded at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It also sponsors InvenTeams, which provide direct support to high school teams of young inventors. Through its outreach activities, the Lemelson-MIT Program provides MIT faculty and students with opportunities to work on inventions for the developing world. The program publishes handbooks that guide inventors in the development and marketing of their work.
The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA). The NCIIA, one of the first programs initiated by Jerome Lemelson, fosters invention and entrepreneurship in higher education to catalyze innovative, commercially viable businesses. Over 200 universities and colleges are members of the NCIIA. Students at these schools can apply for grants to form multi-disciplinary "E-Teams" ("E" for "excellence" and "entrepreneurship"), that develop product ideas, build prototypes and research marketing strategies. The program also provides faculty with grants to develop new ways to teach invention, innovation and entrepreneurship. An example of an E-Team is “GROW,” a hybrid solar/wind energy-producing device that resembles vines of ivy; their innovation was displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of its “Design and the Elastic Mind” exhibition. Another example is Keen Mobility, which grew out of an E-Team project that developed a new type of crutch that utilizes different types of shock absorbers to reduce long term muscular-skeletal injuries in the disabled. Over 81 businesses have been launched as a result of students taking inventions that they developed with NCIIA grants to commercialization.
Read more about this topic: Lemelson Foundation
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