Matthew M. Mehalik

Turning Good into Gold: A Comparative Study of Two Environmental Invention Networks

This article proposes three states in an actor-network and a global/local distinction among actants. This theoretical framework is applied to two invention networks: one created by an inventor of solar heating systems and another created by a designer who wanted to create an environmentally sustainable furniture fabric. Both solar inventor and fabric designer wanted to develop technologies that would improve the environment and also make money. The article concludes by considering whether invention networks that intend to turn “good into gold” have to evolve a shared representation or whether it is sufficient for a new design to serve as a boundary object for actants.

A Framework for Strategic Network Design Assessment, Decision Making, and Moral Imagination

This article presents a framework for practitioners who may be interested in maintaining adaptive stability of sociotechnical networks. The framework is developed from assembling several concepts that are useful for assessing and for drawing on appropriate moral reasoning strategies as sociotechnical networks are designed, constructed, and adapted. One such strategy involves the ability to assess degrees of perspective sharing and trading relationships in networks using moral imagination. The article uses the case of the design of an environmentally sustainable fabric to illustrate these strategic concepts. The framework also draws on other examples of cases in which sociotechnical networks have become destabilized to illustrate instances in which the framework may have been useful for decreasing a tendency for destabilization.

Turning students into inventors and entrepreneurs: the continuing evolution of a course on Invention and Design

In 1994, a multi-disciplinary faculty team developed a course on Invention and Design at the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia. This course has been taught every year since, and has undergone significant changes in that time. In this paper, we focus on the new projects and opportunities resulting from our association with the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA). We also discuss the challenges we have faced in trying to maintain an interdisciplinary, team-taught project based course in an era of limited resources and often conflicting demands.

Reinventing invention and design

For the last five years, we have taught a course on Invention and Design which attracts students from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, as well as the School of Engineering and Applied Science. This course has been a laboratory for trying new approaches to teaching and for experimenting with new instructional technologies. In this paper, we describe how the course has evolved over five years, what we have tried and how it has worked. Through a series of active learning modules, the students experience the processes of design and invention. They also reflect on their activities and group interactions, and compare their results and processes with those of other teams. In the last few years, we have made extensive use of the World Wide Web and have incorporated multimedia into our cases and projects. We describe the cases, exercises and projects used in this class and the tools we use to foster reflection. We strive to balance doing with reflection, individual and team activities, and personal and interpersonal interactions with the use of technology.