Review of the presentation

Dr. Benjamin Sovacool has given us a presentation, Adoption/ Non-adoption of technological innovations. This presentation focuses on the motivation and purpose of invention, the conditions for people to make good inventions and the standard for judging invention. “The things are all about solving problems” stated Dr. Sovacool. According to him, people are motivated by the desire for a more enjoyable and easier life to invent things. The desire human beings could never be satisfied. Thus, the process of innovation is nonstop. However, there are three dangerous traps in the way that may prevent people from inventing. They are conventions, fear of trying new things and suspicion of oneself. Moreover, for people to make good inventions, they must be creative and have the necessary knowledge and “street smart” which means to know things currently provided so that they won’t waste their time. In addition, since users’ reflections of an invention decide whether it is good or not, inventors should learn about human hehaviours as well in order to learn how customers will response to a product.

The overall presentation is successful, for the content is useful and the way of presenting is able to grab audiences’ attention. Nowadays, the world requires engineers to be capable of designing or creating products that is original, user-friendly as well as practically good (Chan, 2009). How can engineers make good invention? What kind of knowledge they need? These questions are all answered in this presentation, which gives the new generation of engineers an instruction of the direction they should work hard in. Except the useful contents, the lecturer also managed to make presentation interesting by using multimedia materials and giving concreted examples. For instance, the videos and pictures about the previous inventions and great inventors inspire the interest of the audiences in the topic. Hence, the whole presentation is brilliant.

Reference:

Chan, Eng Soon. “Desinging engineering to change the world”. April 21, 2009. The Straits Times.