HP Innovation Journal Issue 04: Fall 2016 | Page 7

globe. In Africa, bicycle operators who transport
passengers from one border to the next have
no way to charge their phones (which are the
lifelines to their business) during the day. So
Dominic Wanjihia, a recent Maker Africa Faire
participant, developed a charging vest made
with a flexible solar panel. This way the bicycle
operator is generating power from sun-up to
sun-down, an average of 12 hours a day, all
while running his business.
Makers come in all shapes, sizes
and professions.
Outside elevator of El Cortez Hotel, San Diego circa 1950s
A convertible wheelchair designed by a team at the Indian
Institute of Technology Kanpur enables independent access
for user to ascend and descend stairs and handle other
obstacles like curbs. Source: Jugaad Innovation.
The Japanese inspire maker ingenuity through-
out their business organizations. The concept
is called Kaizen — a system that involves ev-
ery employee, from upper management to
the cleaning crew. Everyone is encouraged to
come up with small improvement suggestions
on a regular basis. Toyota is most recognized
for applying the Kaizen philosophy to manu-
facturing production.
But the Kaizen maker spirit can happen
at any level and impact a business in various
ways. In the 1950s the El Cortez Hotel in San
Diego wanted to add an additional elevator
for guests. The high-paid engineers hired by
the hotel came up with a plan that would have
required the hotel to close for a few months
during the interior construction. That was until
a janitor at the hotel offered up a simple and
smarter solution to build the elevator outside
of the hotel. The world’s first outside glass el-
evator allowed the hotel to remain open during
the construction, alleviating concerns around
lost revenue and jobs.
At HP we have embraced the Kaizen philos-
ophy across organizations and roles. In fact,
to reinforce our “everyone is a maker” philos-
ophy we’ve been actively recruiting all types of
employees into the MakerSpace Community.
Recently our Boise, Idaho MakerSpace hosted
a five-class series of events called “CD Clocks”
during its grand opening week. Employees
made their own CD clock with 3D drawn hands.
This event was aimed at teaching employees
how to use the MakerSpace’s 3D printing pens.
There was a great turnout of local employees
from all walks of HP life including janitors,
administrative assistants, interns, engineers
and their families. These HP Makers had a
Employees and families at HP Makerspace in Boise, ID
great time unleashing the artistic abilities they
didn’t know they had, and christened the new
MakerSpace.
Empowering the next
generation of makers
We are still in the early stages of the maker’s
movement. With increased focus in our schools
and communities on advancement in science,
technology, engineering and math (STEM), a
growing emphasis on multi-disciplinary skills,
accelerating technology innovation, and crowd-
sourced knowledge, we are empowering the
next generation of makers to take their curiosity
and creativity to a whole new level.
Young makers like Nicole Mendoza and
Kimberly Veliz — creators of Slapband, a wear-
able wristband for monitoring health vitals
including blood pressure — are able to proto-
type and bring products to market faster than
ever before.
The sky is the limit for this new generation
of makers. 0ur “hands-on” attitude of the past
can be our future, by allowing students to tinker
from an early age, gain a full appreciation of
the fundamentals, while promoting the next
wave of technologies. With the potential to
Mendoza and Veliz pose in their lab. Source: Maker Faire
transform industries and create new markets, it
will be exciting to see where these makers take
us — and what technologies we can provide to
he lp them to reinvent the future together. 

Chandrakant D. Patel is a distinguished
Senior Fellow and Chief Engineer at HP.
In 2014, he was inducted into the Silicon
Valley Engineering Hall of Fame.
Mei Jiang is Head of Pan HP Innovation
Strategy. Her focus is on HP’s future
growth, capitalizing on disruptive tech-
nologies and business model innovation.
Issue 4 · Fall 2016 · Innovation Journal 7