Published in the Independence Daily Reporter, May 18, 2016

Some believe innovation is available only through lightning bolts from the sky or muses that visit in the night.  Many times, however, experimentation, experience and a combination of existing solutions are what lead to new innovation.

Six-year old Clara Conard, born in China with a congenital limb deficiency was adopted at a very early age by the Conard family in Minneola, 22 miles south of Dodge City in Southwest Kansas.  Clara’s limb deficiency hasn’t slowed her down much.  She’s active in gymnastics and all manner of other activities for a girl her age.  She puts on and removes her prosthesis with ease, as if it were a jacket or glove.  She wanted to learn to play the violin as does one of her older siblings so the family purchased a patented violin bow adapter to fit to the end of her prosthetic device.  There were two problems with this solution.  First, there was the weight of the prosthetic, making it tiring to practice for very long.  Second, the whole apparatus was so long it forced Clara to hold her arm in an unnatural position in trying to get the right sound out of the instrument.

The family found a design for a 3D printed solution on the Internet and learned about Fab Lab ICC through some of our previous media coverage.  They came to Independence mid-November last year for a trial fitting of the new 3D printed adapter.  After shortening the overall length much more than anyone would have guessed, Clara was able to produce a better musical tone than ever before.  The only problem was the device slipping off of her short forearm.  The family went home and we vowed to come up with a better solution, perhaps something made from leather to fit to the arm but adapted to the 3D printed rod and bow adapter.

Using the plastic version as a model, friend of Fab Lab ICC and part-time leather craftsman, Bobby Joe Paasch of Coffeyville, fabricated a custom leather apparatus that joins straps for Clara’s forearm and her upper arm with a hinge joint corresponding to her elbow.   Voilà, the device worked, giving Clara the flexibility to bend her elbow while keeping everything firmly attached to her arm.

Many innovations do not result from lightning-bolt epiphanies or muses visiting us at night (although these things sometimes do happen), but rather they result from experience, experimentation and the combination of existing solutions and technologies.  This experience serves as a great example, combining new 3D printing technologies with age-old leather craft to provide an innovative solution for a little girl living in Southwest Kansas.

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter, May 11, 2016

There’s a philosophy involved with operating Fab Labs and Maker Spaces that helps make them a special and positive experience for most users as they learn by doing.

Although not a registered trademark, “Fab Lab” (Fabrication Lab) is generally a reference to a type of Maker Space.  For most of us, “Maker Space” is a more generic term for a space set up to allow people to make things.

The philosophy of most Fab Labs is patterned after the first Fab Lab initiated at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) circa 2000.  Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT, grew tired of seeing smart students in his classes that couldn’t do anything with their hands.  He put together a fabrication laboratory so that students could begin to learn how to manifest their ideas into physical reality (i.e. make things).  Then came a fabrication lab for the community in South Boston.  Barcelona, Spain set up a community “Fab Lab” not long after and the International Fab Lab Network (IFLN) was born.

When we decided to create Fab Lab ICC in the spring of 2014, there were fewer than 200 Fab Lab members in the IFLN.  Today, there are over 600.  The growth of Fab Labs and Maker Spaces in the world is exploding as people in communities realize the positive and sometimes astounding effects that “making things” has on people’s self-confidence.  It doesn’t seem to matter what age, stage or walk of life, the Fab Lab experience does wonders for all; young, old, gifted, challenged, technical or artistic.

The IFLN charter, to which we ascribe in order to belong to the network, requires that the Fab Lab facility be available to the community.  We interpret that to mean in “an affordable manner”.  We are a hybrid academic-community Fab Lab and we are committed to being open to the community at least half of normal business hours each week.  We are open Monday through Thursday, 1:00pm to 8:00pm, Friday 1:00pm – 5:00pm and Saturday, 9:00am – 1:00pm.  That’s 36 hours each week.  The rest of the work week is available for classes and by appointment to members.

“Affordable” means that an individual can belong to Fab Lab ICC for $100 per year, have access to all machines and only pay for or provide the materials used.  Other categories are available and are also affordable.  The membership fees alone will not sustain the on-going operation, especially considering the cost of staffing and machine repair/replacement.  We’ll always depend partially on donations and grants.  We’ll never be fully staffed as you would expect in a well-run restaurant or hotel, but due to our nature of being a “do-it-yourself” institution, it works.  Our staff, always thin, helps out as we can.  Our members help each other and in the process learn better themselves.  We all work together to keep Fab Lab ICC safe, clean and ready for everyone’s next project.

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter, May 4, 2016

I think I’ve underestimated the potential of entrepreneurship (now, I call it entrepreneurial mindset) since 2006 when I learned how to spell the word after accepting the position of facilitator/business coach of the Successful Entrepreneur Program at Independence Community College.

For many people, the term “entrepreneurship” implies business ownership or business “start-up”. Certainly, that is true sometimes, but entrepreneurship can be interpreted as a way of thinking of new ways to solve problems for others, many times with limited resources.  Successful entrepreneurship includes continuous innovation as successful entrepreneurs knowing they always have to be looking for the next greatest way to serve their customers or coworkers.  Innovation sometimes means new inventions and/or new technology but many times it means a new twist on an existing idea.

Today I’m starting to realize that a goal of developing the “Mindset” among everyone in a region has a great potential—indeed, the only hope–to provide economic prosperity and overall satisfaction with life.

The overarching objective the Entrepreneurial Mindset class, featuring the Ice House Entrepreneurship curriculum is to learn how successful entrepreneurs recognize problems as opportunities and figure out creative ways to solve them. Pretty much, no matter what any of us do with our lives, we are involved in solving problems for others, or at least we should be.  This can be as a self-employed business person, or as an employee in someone else’s company or organization.  Entrepreneurial Mindset should go far beyond that; our social, civic and government programs should seek to solve problems for others with Entrepreneurial Mindset.

The eight life’s lessons in the Ice House curriculum provide the central themes of the “Mindset”.  They are timeless and really have more to do with a way of looking at life and interacting with others than they do with specifically starting or running a business.

So, while we do talk about business start-ups in this class, what we really emphasize is how to learn to become better problem solvers.  Entrepreneurs can be at work both within other companies and organizations as well as within their own businesses.  Employees that understand the “Mindset” will do a much better job at taking care of customers whether they are external to the company or internal customers within the same organization.

As more and more companies strive to be more innovative in our current entrepreneurial economy, look for more and more employees to come to the “Entrepreneurial Mindset” class and sitting down beside those with a goal to open their own businesses.  All are looking for a new mindset to better view problems as opportunities and find innovative solutions.

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter, April 27, 2016

There’s a “new” entrepreneurial capitalism emerging in the United States.  Actually, it’s been here a while except that many of us didn’t recognize it at first; many don’t recognize it now.

Carl J. Schramm, then president of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri wrote a book about this subject in 2006 called the “Entrepreneurial Imperative”.  He recognized what was going on several years ago and in fewer than 200 pages does an excellent job of explaining the reasons that entrepreneurial capitalism has come about.

He speaks of the old bureaucratic economy that started after World War II and ended a few years ago.  In that economy, we were led to believe-and we still imply to our young people-that big business will hire you when you get your college degree.  Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s, you could stay with a company your whole career and then retire to collect a nice pension.  During that time it looked like big business, the labor unions and government would take care of all our needs, but funny things began to happen on the way to the recessions of the last few decades.  Pensions and life-time employment have pretty much gone away and all three, big business, labor unions and the government have became bureaucratic and unresponsive to the changing marketplace.

Meanwhile, the fall of the Soviet Union in the late 1980’s, followed by the proliferation of the Internet were the ingredients for a global marketplace, one in which people around the world want a piece of the market pie, including the huge American pie.  The complacency of the old American bureaucratic economy has been replaced by a fiercely competitive global marketplace.

Businesses that have recognized what has occurred, promoting and embracing a new entrepreneurial organization, have done well, even after the last big recession that started in 2008.  Many businesses, both large and small that haven’t responded to the entrepreneurial economy, are well, not doing so well.  The future will be dominated by smaller, agile, entrepreneurial firms that keep their ears to the marketplace, providing the customized individual products and services made possible by the digital age.

An entrepreneurial economy, not only here in America, but around the world is the best hope of expanding the economic pie, allowing everyone that wants to work to be successful and build wealth and well-beingfor themselves and their families.  Those of us that figure out how to operate in this “new” entrepreneurial economy will be the ones that enjoy the fruits of the global marketplace.