Building the I Can Invent Mindset Through Real-World Lessons

Teach Students How to Be Persistent and Use Creative Problem-Solving Skills

Developed in collaboration with some of the world’s most accomplished inventors, our National Inventors Hall of Fame^® (NIHF) Inductees, the I Can Invent^® Mindset is a collection of nine skills and attributes that are key to transforming today’s students into the innovators of tomorrow.

As students will likely enter a workforce with jobs that do not yet exist, it’s imperative we teach them how to innovate and adapt when confronted with adversity. This is why it is so important that educational programs provide children with opportunities to build these skills, which will help them succeed in our increasingly complex world.

In this white paper, we unpack three components of the I Can Invent Mindset and pair them with NIHF Inductee stories that embody each. Highlights include:

• The story of how NIHF Inductee Chieko Asakawa used the power of persistence to overcome an early childhood accident causing permanent blindness and invent a way for visually impaired individuals to navigate the internet.
• The cautionary tale of NIHF Inductee Gordon Gould and how his initial lack of knowledge about intellectual property protection resulted in a 30-year legal battle over ownership of his invention, the optical laser.
• An exploration of how NIHF Inductee George Washington Carver’s incredible creative problem-solving techniques allowed him to discover an unprecedented amount of uses for sweet potatoes and peanuts.