Myth No. 2: Big tech firms do most of the innovating today
Based on the spectacles that tech companies make out of announcing new products (when Apple unveiled a new iPod in September, Chris Martin from Coldplay and Lady Gaga were on hand), it would be easy to think that the big companies of Silicon Valley are doing most of the innovating these days.
Not so, according to a recent study.
Eric Von Hippel of MIT and colleagues found that regular Joes spend more money in aggregate on developing new consumer products as all of the innovation firms in the UK. And more than 6 percent of the 1,173 people studied had participated in “household” innovation.
“Hippel’s work suggests that people like you and me (and Mark Frauenfelder) are a hidden engine of economic development as we reshape the things that we buy,” Alexis Madrigal writes in The Atlantic’s tech section. “If we assume that American households are as innovative as their British counterparts, 14.5 million of us develop products, and we spend something like $18 billion a year doing it.”
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
