It was great to see Herb alive and smiling. Herb was cautious, and happy. Herb eventfully left St. Elizabeth’s hospital to live and work on his own. A funny note I remembered as I completed the last entry. The last time I saw Herb I was with my new wife Sherry. She joined me on a trip to visit Herb. As we were leaving the hospital I was explaining how sever Herb’s injuries were and how close to death Herb was, when we heard someone behind us. It was Herb in his regular, not an electric wheelchair. Herb, by now, had the partial use of both of his arms. He could use his arms enough to push his own wheelchair and type on his keyboard.
After several months of therapy, rehabilitation, and instruction on how to live as a quadriplegic, Herb returned home, was working as an engineer, earning a good living, and doing very well on his own. In the fall of 1998; however, we lost Herb due to medical complications. Because of the quadriplegic’s paralysis, they remain physically inactive and often contract pneumonia and die of infection. This is how most quadriplegics die as we have recently seen with the actor, Christopher Reeves who became a C-2 Quadriplegic due to a horse ridding accident. Chris was the last disable person I got to work with using my SenSei System.
(Is It Possible?)
As I left ST. Elizabeth’s hospital that morning I had a strange sense of profound satisfaction. It was the first time I had ever designed and built something for someone who was so in need. It was gratifying. It was very exciting for me to see that someone could benefit so greatly from a product the I developed. I never experienced anything like this before. (more…)
Read MoreDuring the remaining four days before the demonstration, I retreated to my garage both day and night. What would this country be without its garages? Some people think that it’s the entrepreneurial spirit that makes us so innovative, but it may very well be that most everyone has a garage.
In The Beginning…
I’m going to step away from the technical aspects of Innovative Thinking for this entry and interweave actual practical examples. Below is the story of how I co-founded the $5.3 billion Assistive Technology industry and how Innovation helped me to develop the first commercially available voice recognition, voice synthesizing, environmental control, the HeadMouse, and the first fully graphic operating system, computer system for the physically disabled.
One morning at 10:30 AM PST, on Saturday January 5, 1985, the rollercoaster started to “click, click, click”. This very moment was the beginning of successes and failures that took me on an Innovated journey that allowed me to work with Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, spend a day with Bill Gates’ dad, meet and brainstorm with the Father of Virtual Reality, become friends with the inventor of the Data Glove and the author of the American with Disabilities Act, sue Microsoft and win, sue Apple and lose, go through Wall Street Road Shows for my I.P.O., initiate and survive two R.I.C.O. filings, a near S.E.C. scandal, develop more than 125 copyrights, have 18 inventions and 30,000 corporate records in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution, 14 more inventions placed in the Computer History Museum, write nearly a million lines of code, bring to market 30 hardware peripherals, open up 25 national and 3 international sales offices, designed the “first computer to save a human life”, hostile shareholder takeovers, V.C. attacks and come out the other end safe and sound with the ability to Innovate on a dime. (more…)
Read MoreBY FC Expert Blogger Lon Safko
Mon Nov 15, 2010
We are all total voyeurs, eavesdroppers! That’s what makes YouTube so popular. Flickr photographs, blogs (web logs or on-line diaries) are what people love to share and sneak a peak at. (more…)
Read More(An Introduction)
Welcome to Innovation…
I wanted to launch this blog with what I believe is the most important thing you should do–become better at Innovative Thinking. Innovative or Creative Thinking has the highest rate of return of anything you can do for yourself and your company.
Read More  | Thank you for reading my blog about blogs!Here is the link to download the spreadsheet. Because the response on this has been so great, I am currently working with Dr. Gary Witt, Ph.D. in psychological marketing on creating a more in-depth look at why some words, titles, and images perform better than others. Log In To Download The Kerpen LinkedIn Blog Spreadsheet Now! I will email you when the ebook is complete! Thank you!
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