Diary

W1: What is innovation according to my students (brain-storm/class discussion).                         

1. What is innovation

• General definition:
  
  • Process of implementing new ideas to create value for an organization. The process of translating an idea or invention into a good or service that creates value or for which customers will pay.
• What we think:
  
  • New ideas, new versions of things that already exist.
  • Ways to make the world better.
  • Make the world a better place.
  • Making the people happier.
  • Making the world more liveable.
  • Giving everyone equal chances.
  • Changing the world and making it a better place.
  • Everyone is equal.
  • To create things that make the world a better place.

1. Every innovation may come with benefits, unexpected side effects and drawbacks. Can your students give some examples of innovation?

• Wat do we consider being innovative?
  
  • Recycling
  • Less pollution à making cars better for the environment
  • More bike accessible
  • Water energy
  • Solar panels
  • Windmills
  • Solar expressway that charges electric vehicles as they drive in China
  • Less fishing
  • New types of medicin
  • Robot prostetics
  • New laws that protect people

• Benefits/drawbacks of innovation:
  
  • People change their phones every 2-4 years. This leads to massive pollution (pollution in creating new phones and in discarding old ones.
  • Weapons industry thrives in creating weapons that go for massive fatality (although they state to be more precise in aim).
  • To much funding goes into weapon industry in comparison to medicinal development, because of profit percentages. This has to change.
  • If the people fish large amounts with huge nets and many boats, there’s less food/fish elsewhere ( where people don’t have huge bats and fishing nets).
  • Windmills take up a lot of space and they make a lot of noise so nobody wants to live close to them.
  • Solar panels cost a lot and there are a lot of people that don’t want/can’t afford to spend that amount of money.
• Will people ever have enough of innovation?
  
  • Never, people always want new things, better things and unfortunately…’more’ things.

• What about ‘innovation alone is not enough’?
  
  • We also need things to get better; to improve our way of life by using less resources and saving the planet as much as possible.

1. Imagine your world, city, classroom, household in 2030:

• How or what would we like to see changed in the future?
  
  • Peace and thus: less war
  • More electric cars (using cars that work on fossil fuels must be punished by enforcing higher taxes!!! And using electric cars should be stimulated by making them cheaper in purchase (price) and subsidising them)
  • Less use of paper in schools: everything online
  • Finally, a cure for cancer and other diseases
  • More green regions/areas in the cities with more plants that are specific to cleansing the atmosphere (cities should be forced to work with bio-engineers to get better results in the analysis of the air-quality)
  • More investments in reusable energy
  • Plastic should also be banned by punished it’s use when it’s not necessary (shopping bags: only reusables!!!)
  • More recycling techniques should be developed
  • Robots who help you with the household

1. Which innovations are making cities more sustainable? Which innovations are ending poverty, etc.

• Sustainability:
  
  • More and more cities are making the city-centre car-free (e.g. Freiburg in Germany) by implementing better public transport and promoting bicycle use (through affordable rent-systems). If that takes effect, we can see that less parking spaces are needed in the city making it possible to create more parks and green areas.
  • Some cities promote group-purchases of solar panels (to make them more affordable and mainstream).
  • Public transport needs a lot of work in Belgium, unfortunately.
• Ending poverty:
  
  • There are many campaigns and projects to end poverty, but we don’t see results.
  • There’s are still a lot of homeless people (even in our city of Hasselt).
  • The government should take more taxes of the rich people who put money overseas to avoid taxes and take less of the middle-class and working people.
  • Tax-evasion should be punished by ending all social security privileges (make them pay everything out of their own pocket) since they don’t contribute to it anyways… we’d rather have that money used to take care of those who struggle to make ends meet.
  • The only way to end poverty is by changing the way we do/see things. The only reason why there is poverty is because we use money… If there was no money, there’s be no poverty… (Still thinking about this next class).