This entertaining and insightful exploration shows why simplicity, elegance, and robustness are essential to the process of invention and offers detailed guidance on conceptualizing your ideas and turning them into reality.

Steven J. Paley is an inventor, entrepreneur, and teacher with over twenty-five years of experience in business and technology. He served as CEO and chief technical officer of Texwipe Company, a manufacturer of specialized contamination control products. Paley holds numerous US and international patents and is a graduate of Stanford University's Product Design program. Most recently, he founded Arise Technologies, which teaches robotics and engineering to special needs and gifted children.

Introduction	p. 13
The Process of Invention
The Paper Clip and the Problem	p. 19
What Makes a Great Idea Great?	p. 19
The History of the Paper Clip	p. 21
What's the Problem?	p. 23
Is It the Right Problem?	p. 25
Reframing the Problem	p. 27
The Evolving Invention	p. 27
Invention in Context	p. 29
The Hidden Obvious	p. 31
The Destination	p. 31
Being Confidently Naive	p. 32
The Vision and the Visionary	p. 34
Needfinding and Paradigms	p. 36
Seeing the Hidden Obvious	p. 39
The Vision Refined	p. 44
Creativity and the Brain	p. 51
The Creative Mind	p. 51
Feeding the Brain	p. 53
Listening to Your Subconscious	p. 55
Thinking with the Gut	p. 58
Your Inner Senses	p. 59
Working Ideas, Percolation, and Not Falling in Love	p. 61
Action versus Thought: The Importance of Doing	p. 63
The Process of Invention	p. 65
The Flash of Inspiration	p. 65
The Resonance of an Idea	p. 72
Sources of Innovation	p. 72
Applications of Life Experience	p. 73
Making the Familiar New	p. 76
Applying Physical Principles	p. 77
Accidental and Chance Observations	p. 83
Learning from Nature	p. 86
The Processes of Invention	p. 97
Design and Invention
Simplicity	p. 101
Profound Simplicity	p. 101
The Simple and the Complex	p. 111
Zero Mass Design	p. 114
Elegance	p. 117
The Many Facets of Elegance	p. 117
Ingenious Simplicity: The Most from the Least	p. 119
Core Inventions: From Screws to Microprocessors	p. 128
Adaptive Inventions: The Elegance of Self-Regulation	p. 130
Smart Inventions: Inventions That Change with Change	p. 133
Characteristics of Elegance-A Summary	p. 142
Robustness	p. 143
Strength	p. 143
Redundancy	p. 145
Simplicity	p. 147
Self-Healing	p. 148
Managed Failure	p. 151
Making it Happen
Problem Solving and Iteration	p. 157
A Systems Approach: Connect the Big Pieces First	p. 158
KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid	p. 159
Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3	p. 160
What You Couldn't See from There, You Can See from Here	p. 162
Attacking from the Bottom	p. 163
Inventing while You Sleep	p. 165
Arbitrate and Iterate	p. 166
Limiting the Scope	p. 166
Stopping	p. 167
Putting It All Together	p. 168
Anticipating the Unanticipated	p. 169
Documentation	p. 170
Summary	p. 171
The Business of Invention	p. 173
Inventing as an Employee	p. 173
Selling Your Inventions	p. 176
Entrepreneurship: Starting Your Own Company	p. 179
Patents	p. 186
The Business of Invention	p. 191
The Art of Invention	p. 193
The Unexplored: Hard Work, Fear, and Fantasy	p. 193
Experience and Invention	p. 194
The Art of Getting It Wrong	p. 196
The Hidden Obvious Revisited	p. 197
Serendipity	p. 199
The Staircase of Creativity	p. 201
The Pleasure of the Problem	p. 203
The Inventor's Tool Kit	p. 204
Making It Real	p. 204
The Art and the Science	p. 205
The Future Is Yours to Create	p. 206
Acknowledgments	p. 207
Notes	p. 209
Bibliography	p. 215
Index	p. 221
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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