[Applause]
so how often is it that in your daily
life you hear the phrase you can do it
throughout your life you know whenever
you’ve been trying to do something
whether it’s a goal just an assignment
at school or even a project this phrase
pops up in your vernacular when you’re
faced with a daunting prospect you can
do it but that feels to take in context
I’m here not to repeat that general
triviality instead you’re confronted
with a lot of ideas when you have
something you might think it’s
impractical that it’s not feasible and
then the kicker someone’s already done
that before and these ideas especially
if you have an innovation in mind or
something you want to enact tend to shut
that thinking process down you think
you’re not going to do that anymore
because there’s no point but nothing
happens automatically and that is a
double-edged sword because if you have
an idea for something that’s not going
to come true automatically you have to
work for it and that’s hard that’s
understandable but also if you want to
make a change
whether it’s societal whether it’s
personal that’s not gonna happen
automatically either so the choice is
yours
to make that happen that’s me almost two
years ago when I just turned 15 standing
from the poster board for a project that
I started when I was 14 this entire
project started when I was discussing
with my mentor and he was complaining
about back pain now how many of you have
back pain yeah a lot of you right it’s
pretty common issue but in his specific
case it was because he grew up having
polio as a child and so he lost almost
all the muscle tissue in his legs
his entire life he’s had to wear leg
braces that lock his knee joint so his
legs don’t collapse when he tries to
stand or walk but normally when you walk
you have to bend your knee to swing it
forward and when you can’t do that
that causes chronic joint and muscle
damage when you’ve been doing that for
years
so naturally like the nerd I am I
thought hey if your leg braces aren’t
good let’s find a better one on the
market right cuz that’s what you do you
buy a better one and that’s what the
problem is like many other devices on
market the market for leg braces doesn’t
have better options they’re extremely
expensive and don’t actually help you
walk and so I thought let’s take some
inspiration from Ironman shall we let’s
make you a robotic leg if your leg
doesn’t work and so that’s what I tried
to do this is a video of my mentor
walking with his conventional fixed
brace you can see his knee doesn’t Bend
during walking
that’s so he can actually put weight on
the leg if it bent it would collapse but
that causes pain now in the next video
the right side of the screen is the
bionic leg brace that I created here you
can see his left leg bending just like
as healthy right leg that’s almost a
complete restoration of healthy walking
functionality to a completely paralyzed
leg so why am I telling you guys about
this story that’s because through this
entire process I learned how to innovate
and a few specific tools that I found
helped me along the way if I knew
everything that I had to do when I
started out I probably wouldn’t have
done it at all but as I found here are a
few specific things that were able to
help me achieve this the first thing is
cultivating skills and you might ask you
know don’t wait cultivate skills all the
time it’s not like farming skills don’t
really grow in a field and even though
you cultivate skills all the time when
you’re at school these are a few
specific things that I found that
usually aren’t taught the first one was
combining fields for my project I just
stepped way out of my comfort zone and
confront fields that I’d never
encountered before
everything from a medical aspect
biomechanics electrical engineering
mechanical engineering computer science
yeah that seems daunting it was to me –
but what – what doing that allows you to
do is it lets you take input from
different fields
and really broaden the horizons of
whatever work you’re doing for example
if I locked myself to only a mechanical
engineering aspect I would have left out
all of the user input that goes into
creating a device that someone’s going
to have to actually wear in real life
you need a patient’s feedback for a
device like this and then things are
inevitably going to go wrong not just
once not just twice many many times over
sometimes even until the hundreds of
times that’s on the right side when my
code had three times as many lines of
error output the lines of code I’d
written you can almost hear the
frustration my son out there but often
times it’s not even that sometimes it’s
quite more literal on the left side have
you ever been working on a circuit board
and then seeing a yellow light flashed
you’re like soon I didn’t know I had a
yellow light on that board right because
I wasn’t a light it was a fire see that
dark charred spot on the microchip on
the left side yeah that that that’s
burned and then learning how to
troubleshoot all the problems that I
faced through the entire process
involved a figuring out what went wrong
by reproducing the issue that’s the burn
spot on the chip on the right yes
sometimes you have to create more fire
in order to figure out exactly how to
prevent it and through this entire
process at some point you’re going to
have to ask for help that was something
I had to learn the hard way after I
spent hours and hours trying to figure
out things on my own until I finally
came to the realization that yes I
actually am quite bad at doing this
particular thing 300 lines of air output
in your code is not good and so there
are always experts that you can ask you
just need to find it whether to mentor
you have in your personal life parents
that you can reach out to for emotional
support or even a support forum online
where you can give us an a bit of code
and see who can help you look for the
resources and know when to ask for help
it’s okay we all need to ask for help
sometimes but all of those were sort of
intangible things what about when you
actually need the stuff
the goods yes at some point you’re going
to need tools and money that’s what I
found this not having the funding to do
something as I found out was not the end
of the world making my prototype would
have required thousands of dollars
thousands of dollars that I didn’t have
and so in that case I was actually able
to reach out and write a grant proposal
to our school district’s Education
Foundation and after a long process of
shark tank style boards of investors and
how do you pitch my idea I was able to
actually get funding from local
companies no strings attached to do my
research but it’s not just applying for
grants to get money the tools are
available in your local communities that
will allow you to do the things that you
want for example I needed a 3d print
parts you know a lot of people have
three pairs out their houses I’m not one
of those people and so I had to go to my
school library in the public libraries
and there I was able to actually 3d
print my parts for a little to no cost
the fact that I wasn’t able to afford 3d
prepare to have at home wasn’t
preventing me in VN from achieving what
I wanted to do and then of course
sometimes you won’t be able to find the
really specialized services I’m talking
fancy equipment they can scan a surface
and give you the exact curve and that is
when you apply some ingenuity and in my
case that usually means digging into my
toy chests from elementary school
because that’s where all the playdough
is so here I needed to create a CAD
design part that would actually attach
my mechanism to my mentors like brace I
don’t have fancy equipment that can scan
the plastic and give me the curve so
instead I used play-doh to design the
brackets and then what styrofoam cut it
out with a knife and then fixed it on
there to actually get the dimensions for
the part that I need to create on the
computer and with all of that
sometimes you gotta revert to what I
called the engineers tool belt duct tape
and classically wd-40 what are those two
for sticking and unsticking essentially
but they’re quite versatile in my first
generation prototype I need to have
something that could be easily attached
and eventually removable
because I knew that wouldn’t be my final
version so I attached my brackets with
shoelaces and duct tape it didn’t look
the prettiest solution but as it turned
out it was quite practical the shoelaces
and duct tape held on they’re quite
tight it could be worn as my mentor
tested and found out and eventually I
was able to remove it quite easily with
the wd-40 when it came time to put the
next version on for the next prototype
that I was gonna make and speaking of
next prototypes that’s the final thing
improvement is a continual process
nothing is going to work right – the
first time or the second time or
probably even the 47th time and in my
case that meant making prototype after
prototype you can see the giant
improvement from the first generation
device to the second generation device
that I made and it didn’t just involve
making something through the entire
process whether it’s an idea that you
want to create a product or even
achieving a goal or achieving change you
need to assess exactly how things are
going in my case that was putting the
bite brace on my mentor testing was
walking and seeing Wi-Fi ibly how much
of an improvement there was and with
that I could figure out exactly how
effective my device was being for things
like social platforms it involves
figuring out how much of your user base
is being receptive to something it
transcends boundaries but improvement is
continual and after all that improvement
process in the end you go back to the
circle of life going back to exactly why
you’re doing it all and then continuing
this process of improvement to better
target your audience and have the impact
that you want to create in my case it
was the people that I wanted to have an
impact on the people whose problems I
wanted to alleviate and essentially just
people who were important to me and that
I wanted to help out in this case the
device that I created was able to solve
the problems that had been plaguing my
mentor for years in terms of this
non-functional leg brace but it really
transcends that so when all of you face
ideas or challenges that you think you
have a potential solution to and that
you want to address here’s the challenge
for you yes there are going to be
problems that you have to tackle along
the way that’s inevitable and that’s a
fact but problems are all around us in
our everyday life the choice is yours to
look for a solution to try to tackle it
to try to innovate to solve to persevere
to inevitably fail and to eventually
succeed the choice is yours
to try to make an impact the toys the
choice is yours to try to change the
world so the next time you’re faced with
one of these prospects don’t ask
yourself can you do it just oh do it thank you
so how often is it that in your daily
life you hear the phrase you can do it
throughout your life you know whenever
you’ve been trying to do something
whether it’s a goal just an assignment
at school or even a project this phrase
pops up in your vernacular when you’re
faced with a daunting prospect you can
do it but that feels to take in context
I’m here not to repeat that general
triviality instead you’re confronted
with a lot of ideas when you have
something you might think it’s
impractical that it’s not feasible and
then the kicker someone’s already done
that before and these ideas especially
if you have an innovation in mind or
something you want to enact tend to shut
that thinking process down you think
you’re not going to do that anymore
because there’s no point but nothing
happens automatically and that is a
double-edged sword because if you have
an idea for something that’s not going
to come true automatically you have to
work for it and that’s hard that’s
understandable but also if you want to
make a change
whether it’s societal whether it’s
personal that’s not gonna happen
automatically either so the choice is
yours
to make that happen that’s me almost two
years ago when I just turned 15 standing
from the poster board for a project that
I started when I was 14 this entire
project started when I was discussing
with my mentor and he was complaining
about back pain now how many of you have
back pain yeah a lot of you right it’s
pretty common issue but in his specific
case it was because he grew up having
polio as a child and so he lost almost
all the muscle tissue in his legs
his entire life he’s had to wear leg
braces that lock his knee joint so his
legs don’t collapse when he tries to
stand or walk but normally when you walk
you have to bend your knee to swing it
forward and when you can’t do that
that causes chronic joint and muscle
damage when you’ve been doing that for
years
so naturally like the nerd I am I
thought hey if your leg braces aren’t
good let’s find a better one on the
market right cuz that’s what you do you
buy a better one and that’s what the
problem is like many other devices on
market the market for leg braces doesn’t
have better options they’re extremely
expensive and don’t actually help you
walk and so I thought let’s take some
inspiration from Ironman shall we let’s
make you a robotic leg if your leg
doesn’t work and so that’s what I tried
to do this is a video of my mentor
walking with his conventional fixed
brace you can see his knee doesn’t Bend
during walking
that’s so he can actually put weight on
the leg if it bent it would collapse but
that causes pain now in the next video
the right side of the screen is the
bionic leg brace that I created here you
can see his left leg bending just like
as healthy right leg that’s almost a
complete restoration of healthy walking
functionality to a completely paralyzed
leg so why am I telling you guys about
this story that’s because through this
entire process I learned how to innovate
and a few specific tools that I found
helped me along the way if I knew
everything that I had to do when I
started out I probably wouldn’t have
done it at all but as I found here are a
few specific things that were able to
help me achieve this the first thing is
cultivating skills and you might ask you
know don’t wait cultivate skills all the
time it’s not like farming skills don’t
really grow in a field and even though
you cultivate skills all the time when
you’re at school these are a few
specific things that I found that
usually aren’t taught the first one was
combining fields for my project I just
stepped way out of my comfort zone and
confront fields that I’d never
encountered before
everything from a medical aspect
biomechanics electrical engineering
mechanical engineering computer science
yeah that seems daunting it was to me –
but what – what doing that allows you to
do is it lets you take input from
different fields
and really broaden the horizons of
whatever work you’re doing for example
if I locked myself to only a mechanical
engineering aspect I would have left out
all of the user input that goes into
creating a device that someone’s going
to have to actually wear in real life
you need a patient’s feedback for a
device like this and then things are
inevitably going to go wrong not just
once not just twice many many times over
sometimes even until the hundreds of
times that’s on the right side when my
code had three times as many lines of
error output the lines of code I’d
written you can almost hear the
frustration my son out there but often
times it’s not even that sometimes it’s
quite more literal on the left side have
you ever been working on a circuit board
and then seeing a yellow light flashed
you’re like soon I didn’t know I had a
yellow light on that board right because
I wasn’t a light it was a fire see that
dark charred spot on the microchip on
the left side yeah that that that’s
burned and then learning how to
troubleshoot all the problems that I
faced through the entire process
involved a figuring out what went wrong
by reproducing the issue that’s the burn
spot on the chip on the right yes
sometimes you have to create more fire
in order to figure out exactly how to
prevent it and through this entire
process at some point you’re going to
have to ask for help that was something
I had to learn the hard way after I
spent hours and hours trying to figure
out things on my own until I finally
came to the realization that yes I
actually am quite bad at doing this
particular thing 300 lines of air output
in your code is not good and so there
are always experts that you can ask you
just need to find it whether to mentor
you have in your personal life parents
that you can reach out to for emotional
support or even a support forum online
where you can give us an a bit of code
and see who can help you look for the
resources and know when to ask for help
it’s okay we all need to ask for help
sometimes but all of those were sort of
intangible things what about when you
actually need the stuff
the goods yes at some point you’re going
to need tools and money that’s what I
found this not having the funding to do
something as I found out was not the end
of the world making my prototype would
have required thousands of dollars
thousands of dollars that I didn’t have
and so in that case I was actually able
to reach out and write a grant proposal
to our school district’s Education
Foundation and after a long process of
shark tank style boards of investors and
how do you pitch my idea I was able to
actually get funding from local
companies no strings attached to do my
research but it’s not just applying for
grants to get money the tools are
available in your local communities that
will allow you to do the things that you
want for example I needed a 3d print
parts you know a lot of people have
three pairs out their houses I’m not one
of those people and so I had to go to my
school library in the public libraries
and there I was able to actually 3d
print my parts for a little to no cost
the fact that I wasn’t able to afford 3d
prepare to have at home wasn’t
preventing me in VN from achieving what
I wanted to do and then of course
sometimes you won’t be able to find the
really specialized services I’m talking
fancy equipment they can scan a surface
and give you the exact curve and that is
when you apply some ingenuity and in my
case that usually means digging into my
toy chests from elementary school
because that’s where all the playdough
is so here I needed to create a CAD
design part that would actually attach
my mechanism to my mentors like brace I
don’t have fancy equipment that can scan
the plastic and give me the curve so
instead I used play-doh to design the
brackets and then what styrofoam cut it
out with a knife and then fixed it on
there to actually get the dimensions for
the part that I need to create on the
computer and with all of that
sometimes you gotta revert to what I
called the engineers tool belt duct tape
and classically wd-40 what are those two
for sticking and unsticking essentially
but they’re quite versatile in my first
generation prototype I need to have
something that could be easily attached
and eventually removable
because I knew that wouldn’t be my final
version so I attached my brackets with
shoelaces and duct tape it didn’t look
the prettiest solution but as it turned
out it was quite practical the shoelaces
and duct tape held on they’re quite
tight it could be worn as my mentor
tested and found out and eventually I
was able to remove it quite easily with
the wd-40 when it came time to put the
next version on for the next prototype
that I was gonna make and speaking of
next prototypes that’s the final thing
improvement is a continual process
nothing is going to work right – the
first time or the second time or
probably even the 47th time and in my
case that meant making prototype after
prototype you can see the giant
improvement from the first generation
device to the second generation device
that I made and it didn’t just involve
making something through the entire
process whether it’s an idea that you
want to create a product or even
achieving a goal or achieving change you
need to assess exactly how things are
going in my case that was putting the
bite brace on my mentor testing was
walking and seeing Wi-Fi ibly how much
of an improvement there was and with
that I could figure out exactly how
effective my device was being for things
like social platforms it involves
figuring out how much of your user base
is being receptive to something it
transcends boundaries but improvement is
continual and after all that improvement
process in the end you go back to the
circle of life going back to exactly why
you’re doing it all and then continuing
this process of improvement to better
target your audience and have the impact
that you want to create in my case it
was the people that I wanted to have an
impact on the people whose problems I
wanted to alleviate and essentially just
people who were important to me and that
I wanted to help out in this case the
device that I created was able to solve
the problems that had been plaguing my
mentor for years in terms of this
non-functional leg brace but it really
transcends that so when all of you face
ideas or challenges that you think you
have a potential solution to and that
you want to address here’s the challenge
for you yes there are going to be
problems that you have to tackle along
the way that’s inevitable and that’s a
fact but problems are all around us in
our everyday life the choice is yours to
look for a solution to try to tackle it
to try to innovate to solve to persevere
to inevitably fail and to eventually
succeed the choice is yours
to try to make an impact the toys the
choice is yours to try to change the
world so the next time you’re faced with
one of these prospects don’t ask
yourself can you do it just oh do it thank you
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