Through his science and technology focused organization FIRST, inventor Dean Kamen empowers young innovators to pursue their passions by teaching teamwork, cooperation, and professionalism.
Visionaries on Innovation
Personal Perspectives from Leading Innovators
The Henry Ford has been collecting America's most pivotal and influential stories in its Archive of American Innovation since 1929. The OnInnovation® videos and articles below showcase some of these stories--with oral history video clips from modern innovators, insights from our curators on historic innovators, and articles from The Henry Ford Magazine covering innovators of today and tomorrow.
Collaborate
Ideas rarely become innovations without the collaboration of numerous people. No one person has all the skills necessary to solve all the roadblocks between concept and final product.
Break Rules
A healthy disrespect for what came before can lead to innovation, according to Pierre Omidyar, Founder of eBay. Entrepreneurs need to question everything, asking, “What is the truth and does it have to be that way?”
Learn from Failure
Innovative endeavors, by their very nature, are risky: No one has made this particular discovery before. What if you fail? Innovators discuss what they have learned from failure and why the freedom to experiment and fail is important.
Remix
As every chemist knows, mixing two distinctly different elements can result in marvelous (and sometimes combustible) discoveries. Learn how remixing leads innovators to surprising creations.
Be Curious
Everyone agrees curiosity drives innovation. Learn from innovators how to couple curiosity and childlike wonder with confidence and belief that you and your ideas can make a difference.
Modern Innovators
CEO of Growing Power, supporting people by providing access to healthy, high-quality, safe, and affordable food.
Ken Block competed in rally racing and redefined motorsport with his tire-shredding Gymkhana videos.
Mechanic Jim Dilamarter started working with Parnelli Jones in 1969 and never stopped. He served as crew chief for Jones’s back-to-back Indy 500 wins, as a team owner, in 1970 and 1971.
Whether at Indiana’s famous Brickyard, Colorado’s daunting Pikes Peak, or Mexico’s rugged Baja California Peninsula, Parnelli Jones never shied away from a racing challenge as a driver or a team owner.
From his early days teaching himself to program computers, Elon Musk has worked to improve the quality of life for everyone through technology.
Martha Stewart has helped millions of individuals to see how they can infuse their lives with style and grace.
Historic Innovators
Areas of Innovation
Natural spaces and agricultural landscapes represent two extremes of the human experience. Human survival depends on careful management of vegetable, animal and mineral resources that make the production of food, fuel, and fiber possible. Innovators help us understand the role we all play in sustaining the environments on which we all depend.
Technology that seems commonplace to one generation is often completely unimagined by the generation that came before. Leaders in technology discuss everything from the rise of the personal computer, Internet, and software industry to how our increasingly connected world is changing and disrupting specific industries.
Human culture is not static—our society changes over time, and these changes are driven by people and their ideas. Hear firsthand how agents of change have created both modest and highly significant transformations to the way we live.
Whether you’re traveling down the block to the store or have your sights set on travel to the stars, there can be multiple ways to get where you’re going. Leaders in the field explain how we have advanced from the very beginnings of air travel to space travel, and from the first automobiles to today’s high-performance racecars.