Chances are, you have probably heard of the incredibly successful company 3M, responsible for inventions such as post-it notes, masking tape, cellophane tape, and many more. This company is so successful because of its constant line up of new products coming out every year, but how are they able to do it? The answer to that is simple: 15% time. This program (also known as blue sky time) allows all employees at the company to take 15% of their working time each year to develop their own products and projects on their own, that they can later pitch to the company. This allows a fresh and diverse stream of ideas to be flowing into the company every month and allows them to always innovate to the next level.

Other programs and companies (like Apple) are now adopting this idea to help generate new ideas, and now it’s the Performance Learning Program’s turn. Every year in term 3, all grades in PLP do something known as the Blue Sky Project. This is, just like 3M’s 15% program, a time when ideas can be brought to life and presented to the world. We are tasked with finding a problem that effects a specific age demographic, then creating an invention to fix it through 3 prototypes.

Some sketches of my first prototype ideas

So far, my project is coming along well. I was able to quickly come up with a problem by thinking of issues that I personally have experienced and/or have been experienced by the people around me. After some brainstorming, I came up with the problem of instruments being incredibly hard to transport, especially for tweens who are smaller. I put was pretty easy for me to come up with my question, but finding a solution was a little bit harder. This was because my problem is something that many have experienced and made solutions to fix, so I needed to find a way to make my solution unique. How I plan to do this is by creating an adjustable handle and easily attachable wheels on clamps that are cheap and low profile to put on instrument cases. The reason this is unique because many of the already invented solutions for this problem are extremely expensive and bulky carrying cases that cannot be adjusted to fit bigger cargo. My plan for the next stage of this project is to begin research on materials, my target age group, and other important information.