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Profs & Pints: Insights on Innovation

Profs and Pints presents: Insights on Innovation, a look at the innovative process and the history of advances that changed the world, with Lawrence Husick, lecturer at Johns Hopkins Universitys Whiting Graduate School of Engineering, chemist, patent attorney, hacker and entrepreneur.

Innovation is a hot commodity, with seemingly every company, elected official, employee, and organization out there either striving to be innovative or proclaiming their worthiness of the label. The problem is that few can answer basic questions about innovation such as: What, exactly, is it? How to you recognize it? How do you do it? Why is it worth doing?

Although we apply the term innovation to some new thing that someone has developedthe latest better mousetrapinnovation is much more than gizmos.

It's also a process, a way to bring about change by introducing valuable new methods, ideas, or products. Its coming up with different ways of thinking and doing. Innovations may be beliefs, organizational methods, and discoveries. Its the creation of value. And despite the stereotype of the innovator as a tireless tinkerer, the impulse that spawns actually innovation is laziness, because it arises from our desire to extract more value from our time and from things around us. It's how we've managed to get away from long days of hunting and gathering and generate economic surpluses. It's often been a way to spend more time in bed or on the couch.

Come learn about innovationand the surprising lives of some of our lazy inventive heroesfrom Lawrence Husick, whose job titles also include Co-Director of the Program on Teaching Innovation at the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Wachman Center. He'll tackle the tough-but-fun innovation question: What are the most important innovations in history, ranked in order? You'll be welcome to chime in with your own ideas, as independent thinking is a big part of what this talk is about. You might not leave able to build a better mousetrap, but your odds of doing so might improve, and you'll gain appreciation of those who did. (Advance tickets: $12. Doors: $15, save $2 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later. Please allow yourself time to place any orders and get seated and settled in.)