Author: Jeremy Losaw

Process of gear mechanics drives countless inventions for consumers. The word “gear” is embedded into the lexicon of our culture in many ways, often with metaphors related to its purpose as a mechanical element. When a football team has a miserable game, its coach may say the players never got out of first gear. When people change direction with their lives, they talk about switching gears. In an episode of “Family Guy,” main character Peter Griffin says that life’s frustrations are “grinding his gears.” And then there’s this quote from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”: “Well, if Fortune be...

Excitement and endurance are all part of setting up at a trade show. I put the box on the scale and watched the numbers on the digital readout rise as it caught up to the weight. Thirty, 40, 45 lbs.—just under the limit. The American Airlines representative looked up from her computer screen and asked for my ID and boarding pass. “What’s in the box?” As my sleepless eyes tried to focus on the box, for a moment I couldn’t remember what was in it. My brain finally caught up to the question and as the response left my...

INIRV REACT’S JOURNEY, FROM CONCEPT TO TRADE SHOW Akshita Iyer, Radhika Iyer and Ranjith Babu went to the movies, only to return home to a horror show. Their invention to address a home-safety issue is a story that highlights the growing importance of the Internet of Things, as well as the key roles of design engineering and marketing in bringing a product to market. Radhika Iyer of Buffalo, New York, was visiting her daughter, Akshita, in Durham, North Carolina in 2015. The opening credits were rolling when Radhika—who had been cooking during the day— had an unsettling sense that...