by Clare Donovan
Meaningful innovation education exposes kids to this vital element.
I love watching the rise of makerspaces in schools. More and more students have access to 3D printers, kid-friendly coding programs, and other great technical tools. This investment in STEM project-based learning means that students with all kinds of learning styles are directly engaged in issues critical to their future.
But there’s a key ingredient missing. When you give students access to awesome tools and the freedom to design, what happens when they hit on something great? Most often, that’s where the project stalls. In the business world, that’s when a patent comes in.
Teaching patenting concepts at a young age is not only feasible, but I believe it’s a way to help women and other underrepresented groups play a bigger role in tech.
Tinker While You Learn
At the Future of Education Technology Conference in Orlando, Fla., I saw some amazing curricula and technology demos [Ed. note: Clare spoke there]. Schools have a huge selection of tools to teach engineering to young students.
Engineering, however, is only one component of the innovation process. Creativity, business and the law also play a critical role. Patents motivate people to invest in the arduous process of inventing by giving them economic ownership for continued development. For a startup, a patent buys you time to do the hard work of bringing your idea to life. Patent education is an important ingredient in helping kids become real-world problem solvers.
Patent education also lays a foundation for financial rewards in the workplace. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office finds that wages in patent-based industries are 74% higher than other verticals, and this premium is growing. This is according to the USPTO’s latest update to “Intellectual Property and the U.S. Economy.”
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