• Question: If you came up with a breakthrough idea in engineering how would you handle it?

    Asked by DavidMul04 to Aisling, Colin, Laurence, Ned, Niamh on 4 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Niamh Shaw

      Niamh Shaw answered on 4 Mar 2016:

      I’m not sure if Im answering this question in the way it was intended but what I understand from your question, I think you want to know about what impact a new discovery might have on your life, and how you would cope with everyone knowing what a great genius you were. So in terms of that question, I guess I would have no idea what that would feel like until it actually happened to me. I guess that lots of people would want to meet you and would want to work with you in solving their problems. I imagine that your time would be taken up a lot more by all these requests and it might be very stressful. So it would be important for me to make sure that I made wise decisions and worked with people that I also admire and would try to accept as many invitations as I could to meet students and help them. But I think that while making a discovery would be really great, the impact of the discovery might be a lot of pressure too.

    • Photo: Ned Dwyer

      Ned Dwyer answered on 4 Mar 2016:

      I would patent it so that nobody else could take my idea and claim it was their own. However nowadays most engineering is done by teams of people working together so you’d have to patent it as a group

    • Photo: Aisling Shannon

      Aisling Shannon answered on 7 Mar 2016:

      I guess in my situation, if I came up with something genius, then it would get used by my work. Intellectual Property Rights I think are such that if you come up with a great invention at work, using work facilities (like your laptop and the lab) then work can claim it as theirs. I wouldn’t mind so much because the engineering part is taking it from just an idea to something real, so if I could be involved in that part too, I would be happy.

    • Photo: Laurence O'Rourke

      Laurence O'Rourke answered on 8 Mar 2016:

      I would firstly go out and celebrate; breakthrough idea’s deserve to be celebrated.

      Within ESA there are procedures to be followed on what to do with ideas/inventions that you create so I guess that is where I would follow up firstly. But normally speaking outside of ESA, certainly the patent is the way to go. You need not only to patent the concept but also look at intellectual property rights etc.

      Ah yes, after that I would go out and celebrate again 🙂

    • Photo: Colin Shirran

      Colin Shirran answered on 9 Mar 2016:

      It depends! If I came up with it within a work environment and during work time the idea would no longer be mine. The company would own it. However I’m sure that I would be given a lead role in developing the idea. Going through it from thought to physical realization would be an immensely proud moment and a huge achievement. Hopefully I’ll experience it.

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