What participants say …

Hoopla Rack,
third place and $4,000,
2008 Schoofs Prize for Creativity;
third place and $700,
Tong Prototype Prize;
and Younkle Best Presentation Award

“Through the whole process, I actually began to see my design turn into a prototype, and now my prototype might actually become a patented reality. By the end, I was so happy that I had chosen to take a chance on myself and do something that brought my engineering and hooping life together.”

—Danielle McIntosh

Pen Smart,
$1,000 Judges’ Award for Special Merit,
2008 Schoofs Prize for Creativity

“I thought of this product two years ago—I wrote it down and kind of forgot about it for awhile. And I realized that if I didn’t do it, I’d always regret it, so I just decided to pursue it. The competition is a great outlet for anyone interested in innovation and development. The experience gives you the tools to develop the idea and the confidence to continue.”

—Daniel Gartenberg

Innovators in the news …
articles about past competitors

The Schoofs Prize for Creativity

Ideas Notebook

A good research notebook is a diary, one that reports thoughts and actions as they happen, not after the fact. State your ideas clearly enough so that someone can pick up your notebook years later and understand what you were thinking and doing on a particular date. Being able to prove when you made an invention may be vital to getting a patent. In the event that a patent is challenged in court, inventors may have to present their notebooks for inspection.

• Students are required to keep a complete record of all work related to their invention, including — design concept sketches; computations; summary of discussions with other team members, consultants, vendors, etc.; and notes and summaries of conclusions and decisions made by the team.

• All calculations should be titled and any references listed and properly credited. Third-party materials such as catalog pages, etc., should be copied and pasted into the notebook.

• There should be no blank spaces on a finished page; an “X” should be drawn through any unused portion of the page. This prevents later entries on that page.

• Every page should be numbered, dated and signed. It is best to begin each day’s work with a new page.

• Please use pen, not pencil. Use the same pen throughout the day. This supports the case that an entry was made all at one time and not altered later.

• If there is need to correct an old data entry, you may return to a previous page, but the change must be easily identified as separate from the original and must be dated, initialed and witnessed. Another solution is to enter the correction on the current day's page, citing the earlier page and specifying why the material in the original record needed to be corrected.