Innovation for Everyone: Solving Real-World Problems with STEM

By Neha Shukla

Approachable, fun, and practical, Innovation for Everyone is a next-generation guide for students to take action within their communities using innovation.

Young inventor and author, Neha Shukla, is passionate about doing her part to address global challenges with science and technology. Her innovatio

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Sep 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885048231

Neha Shukla

Neha Shukla (she/her) is 18 years old and an inventor, social entrepreneur, activist, and AI ethicist at the World Economic Forum. Her work developing tech for social good is recognized in The New York Times, Forbes, Harper's Bazaar, Bloomberg, and commended by President Biden, and the British Royal Family.

Book preview

Introduction

It was March of 2020. The COVID-19 crisis was raging. My high school had just shut down and we were all at home in lockdown. Seeing my neighbors getting rushed off to the hospital and not coming back shocked me. And it felt wrong that someone could lose their life because of a simple mistake of not social-distancing correctly. As case numbers in my own community and around the world started rising, I knew I had to do something to help.

I was just fifteen at the time, but something about seeing my community in pain moved me to take action.

I created SixFeetApart, a wearable social-distancing device embedded in a hat, to help save lives during the pandemic. The device detects when an approaching person comes within the CDC’s social-distancing guideline of six feet using ultrasonic technology. It then alerts the user to take a step back to proactively slow the spread of COVID-19.

I had never created my own technology, worked with microprocessors, or built my own prototypes before. But within weeks of starting lockdown, I taught myself how to build with technology and create a solution to a real-world problem, as a teenager tinkering around at her bedroom desk.

By the summer, I had created a full prototype portfolio of three devices to be inclusive for everyone: a hat for use outdoors, a lanyard for schools and offices, and an armband for on-the-go safety. And I built my first app that sends social-distancing notifications to your phone to keep track of your safety throughout the day.

The Power of Youth Innovators

I am just one example of the power youth holds in creating solutions and innovating at times of crisis.

In Brazil, a group of teenagers came together to create a solution to food inequality in low-income neighborhoods of cities. They created Nossa Horta (or Our Vegetable Garden in English), a grassroots movement which constructs urban gardens, promoting community agriculture, and provides healthy food to areas that can’t afford it (Simmons, 2022).

Seventeen-year-old Dasia Taylor from Iowa created a new surgical suture that changes color when it becomes infected and needs to be changed. She had the incredible idea of using beetroot juice to identify changes in pH by looking at the color change of the beetroot-dyed sutures (Machemer, 2021).

Kids around the world are taking action today to create solutions to problems close to their heart. Whether it’s making a solution to help their local community or revolutionizing technology for the world, youth are taking their imaginations and curiosity to a new level with innovation.

A World in Need of Problem-Solvers

Our world is facing many new and growing challenges, like COVID-19, climate change, threats to cybersecurity, global hunger, access to education, and so many more. Over two hundred million people have become infected with COVID-19, causing lasting damage to vulnerable populations and livelihoods and introducing long-term health implications (Centers for Disease Control, 2021).

We have until 2030 to address our growing carbon emissions to prevent irreversible global warming (Watts, 2018). By 2025, cybercrimes will cost the world over $10.5 trillion dollars annually in losses (Brooks, 2021). And over 263 million, or one in five, children and adolescents worldwide lack education, which has hardly changed over the past five years (UNESCO Institute of Statistics, 2018). Cancer is among the leading causes of death worldwide, with over 29.5 million annual cases predicted by 2040 (National Cancer Institute, 2020).

These problems are too big to face alone. We need a collaborative approach to solving problems, with young people as part of the dialogue. Problem solvers should not just be male scientists in an isolated lab but each and every one of us, regardless of age, gender, background, or location.

The more people involved in the innovation process, the more problems we can solve and the faster we can do it. Creating an innovation ecosystem is the first step we need to take to solve problems and youth are such a critical part of that ecosystem. We need youth alongside adults and organizations to be solving problems, creating change, and innovating—to build a better world for all of us!

Creating a Framework for a New Generation of Youth Innovators

Our generation already has motivation to solve problems, as evidenced by petitions circulating through social media and local movements in our towns. Gen Z already knows what problems to care about, but they don’t know how to channel their passion into tangible solutions. To create long-lasting change that addresses the root cause of the problem, we need frameworks and a process to innovate and solve real-world problems. Why isn’t there a simple and effective innovation framework anyone can use to innovate?

As a teen innovator, I began compiling and creating my own innovation framework that could be used by students like me who are just getting started in their innovation journey.

I’ve been running global Innovation and STEM workshops and reached over fifty thousand students across the globe in my mission to build the next generation of young problem solvers and innovators tackling the world’s biggest problems! In my workshops, I take students through my four-step process of innovation and interactive activities so they leave with a tangible solution to a real-world problem. The students in my workshops are so curious and excited by the possibility of being a part of a bigger cause. I’m always surprised by their creative solutions to everyday problems! I was inspired to write this book when I saw students as young as first graders coming up with tangible solutions to massive problems like pollution, within a forty-five-minute workshop. Imagine the power of each student if they use frameworks like my four-step innovation process and work on solving a problem for months, or even a year.

In the early stages of my own innovation journey, I had to figure out so much of this on my own. When I was younger, I wish I had known about finding mentorship, learning from failure, researching effectively, and the process of building with technology to solve problems.

Combining my passion for helping others with my experiences in innovation, I set out to create a simple framework anyone can follow to start solving the world’s biggest problems. I set out to create a framework by youth and for youth to uplift a new generation of young problem solvers.

Who Is This Book For?

This book is for K-12 students across the world who want to create a positive impact on their communities and jumpstart their innovation journey. This book is also great for educators, schools, organizations, leaders, and people that are ready to become problem solvers and tackle the world’s biggest challenges!

This book is a guide for innovation, problem-solving, and community impact. It’ll walk you through my simple four-step process of innovating, from coming up with an idea to creating a physical prototype to sharing your innovation and gaining community support.

It’s filled with interviews and advice from expert scientists, community builders, entrepreneurs, and leaders who have been down this road of innovation many times before. Their words will inspire you and share new perspectives on this journey.

In addition, each chapter includes interactive worksheets, activities, and exercises for you to experiment hands on with problem-solving. If you’re stuck or need motivation to overcome an obstacle, you can visit the book’s website found at the back of the book at www.neha-shukla/book and join the discussion alongside other young innovators.

What are you waiting for? It’s time to begin your innovation journey. Let’s get started!

Part I:

Identify

Chapter 1

My Journey and the Value of Innovation

The best way to predict the future is to create it

- Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), Sixteenth President of the United States

Have you ever watched television, played video games, or used a microwave?

You might not realize it, but these are all examples of innovation in our daily life. They were all created to solve a problem and make life easier for people. Cars were invented to make it easier for people to travel without using horses for transportation. Microwaves were invented so people could heat up their food faster. And video games were invented so teenagers could find something fun to do.

But what does innovation mean anyway? If you’ve ever tried baking cookies, you know the recipe doesn’t always work out the first time. You try again, adding more baking soda or putting them in the oven for longer, and ta-da! Your cookies finally come out perfect. Like this, innovation refers to the process of trying, failing, trying again, and ultimately creating something that solves a problem.

Forbes defines innovation as something different that creates value. It doesn’t need to be the most revolutionary idea, just something that improves on existing solutions or creates something new to solve a problem or add value (Bolton, 2019).

Innovation is about reacting to change in creative ways, generating new ideas, researching, and continually finding ways to improve and think outside the box.

We’ve all heard of some famous inventors and innovators. Albert Einstein developed the theory of relativity. Ada Lovelace was the world’s first computer programmer who worked on the Analytical Engine. And Thomas Edison is best known for creating a new and improved lightbulb filament.

And you can be in this list!

Welcome to Step 1 of the innovation process, Identify. This step is all about exploring your passions, finding real-world problems you’re excited about solving, and brainstorming solutions and methods to address your problem.

You’ll be discovering social problems you’re passionate about solving by looking at what excites you and how you can translate that into an innovation. You’ll brainstorm the best ways to go about solving the problem, use frameworks to break down the problem, and come up with solutions. The time spent in this step will set you up for success in the later steps, where you’ll build prototypes and share your innovation with others.

Before you begin your innovation journey and set out to change the world with your inventions and solutions, let me share my story of innovation with you. As a teen inventor and scientist, I’ve learned a lot from trying, failing, and continuing in my journey and I hope my story can help inspire you.

Sharing My Story of Innovation

My journey of innovation started when I was five years old. At this time, I loved to play with blocks, stacking up towers and bridges out of wooden toys. When I was ten years old, I discovered an app called Hopscotch, which let me use simple blocks of code to program emojis and cartoon characters moving around.

Using my iPad, I started creating simple games using this code, creating my own world I could program. Around this age, I started looking at problems in my community and searching for ways I could solve them. My parents would challenge me and my younger sister to draw sketches of inventions that could help people. I would draw prototypes of cars that could fly to prevent air pollution or any idea I could think of to solve problems. The mindset of believing I have the power to create positive change was something that stuck with me throughout my journey.

Since I was ten years old, I’ve been investigating problems I was curious about. I investigated tooth decay from soda, hearing loss from loud movie theaters, radiation coming from cell phones, and finding natural ways to purify river water for developing countries. But my innovation journey truly began at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was March 2020, and my entire family was in lockdown, as my school and city were shut down from the spread of the virus. I saw how my community got turned upside down overnight because of the pandemic. While I watched the news and saw the numbers of COVID cases rise every day, I also started seeing the direct impact of the pandemic on my community. I saw neighbors going to the hospital and not returning. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) had just created the social-distancing guideline of six feet, which was sometimes difficult to follow precisely.

My high school shifted to using Zoom classes and I suddenly had a lot of free time on my hands. I sat at my bedroom desk and looked out the window, seeing how my neighbors weren’t able to maintain a safe social-distance while walking outside. It seemed wrong someone could potentially die because of simply not social-distancing correctly. I set out to create a solution that could help people concerned about their health to monitor and guide safe and accurate social-distancing. I wanted to simplify and quantify social-distancing.

I started researching how the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, spreads and learned it is an airborne virus that spreads through respiratory droplets in the air. Social-distancing guidelines are important to slow the spread of the virus, but it can be difficult for people to precisely measure their distance at all times. From my research, I understood I needed to find a way to measure distance from nearby people and alert users when people came too close.

I began searching through the internet for tools that could achieve my goal of measuring distance and stumbled upon microcontroller technology. I learned about ultrasonic sensors, a technology that could be interfaced with microcontrollers to measure distance up to thirteen feet. The week before COVID-19 struck, some professors showed me and my peers a microcontroller at the local science fair. I was both curious and amazed at how a piece of technology so small could execute so many different tasks. Remembering this, I started a massive deep dive into the technology of microcontrollers, learning everything I possibly could by reading articles and watching YouTube videos.

By the time I ordered my first microcontroller device and it shipped to my house, I had studied the theory and concepts of the technology so I could dive right into building projects. I went through the example project book and learned all about concepts like parallel and series circuits, how to use resistors, and working with sensors. After playing around with the technology for about two weeks and dreaming about circuits and electronics out of excitement, I finally began working on a prototype for my device.

I built a microcontroller device by interfacing an Arduino UNO board with ultrasonic sensors and buzzers, which alert users when approaching people come within the six-foot detection range. I slowly began improving the design, functionality, and features of the prototype every day. Whether it was fixing the wiring so I didn’t blow the sensors, adding Bluetooth capabilities to transmit results to a user’s mobile app, or making the device more energy efficient and sleek, I began to improve and iterate over time.

While I was in the process of building my device for SixFeetApart, I joined an online entrepreneurship academy called Girls With Impact, which walked me through each step of the process of creating a social enterprise. I learned how I could create an innovation that would address the needs of my target audience of the elderly, immune compromised, and frontline workers. The program also taught me concepts like building a budget, gaining support and partnerships, and spreading the word about my innovation to garner community support.

I was mentored by Jennifer Openshaw, the CEO of Girls With Impact, who guided me and spread the word about my innovation. She taught me the value of creating solutions people need and inspired me to dream big and share what I created with the world. That summer, I was featured on the New York Times for creating a COVID-19 innovation. After that, everything snowballed, and people heard more and more about my innovations. I was so grateful to be featured on the Nasdaq screen in Times Square and interviewed on ABC news. As a result, I began to gain a platform as a young innovator. As I received more opportunities to use my voice, I started to notice the major gap of innovation among my peers and wanted to give back to the youth community.

My generation is passionate about social change and creating an impact on our communities—we can see the petitions and calls to action everywhere on social media. But we don’t have a framework to create and innovate sustainable, long-lasting solutions to these problems. The value of innovation and a problem-solving process are not taught in schools or emphasized for young people.

I started working with local organizations, like my local World Affairs Council chapter, then with larger organizations to spread the word of youth in innovation and problem-solving.

I began running Innovation Workshops for K-12 students in my area and globally to share what I learned from innovating. After two and a half years I was able to reach over 52,000 students across the world.

I was beyond honored to be recognized by President Biden and the late Princess Diana and Royal