creativity & invention
what an honor to be featured at the Cade Museum for Creativity & Invention in their Turning Tides exhibit. and alongside Oneka Technologies, a fellow reverse osmosis start-up with whom we had just shared a session earlier last week at the CaribDA Caribbean Desalination Association biennial conference.
looking back, it was a fitting trip. four years ago Grace Connors, Sahil Shah and i were pitching Harmony Desalting (Harmony Water back then) at MIT pitch competitions. back then, we had our sights set on the Caribbean as our beachhead market due to high energy costs and slow logistics. since leaving MIT, our demonstrations have focused on brackish water. as we turn back to seawater, it was validating to hear folks talk about the same challenges we were thinking about back in 2020. Tom Pankratz gave a history of desalination innovations in the Caribbean. we heard from and met some of the folks at Seven Seas Water Group, who pioneered (and trademarked) Water-As-A-Service.
i nearly skipped visiting the Cade Museum but decided to take a detour on my way back home from Miami (via the awesome Brightline Trains service to Orlando). i’m so glad i did, for two reasons: the museum on its own is fantastic. secondly, the staff members recognized me and treated me like a rock star! as a entrepreneur, you have to get used to lots of rejection. so that was a nice little treat for me on Harmony’s official two-year birthday.
some takeaways from my visit:
WE KNOW NOTHING - not even sixty years ago, football coaches thought providing fluids during practice would cause cramping and bloating. totally backwards to my days of playing high school football where we had to weigh in and out during two-a-days, were told to monitor the color of our urine, and of course had plenty of water breaks.
makes you wonder — what misconceptions do we hold today regarding technologies newer and less fundamental than our human body?
GATORADE, THE ORIGINAL SPIN-OUT - we can thank the existence university spin-outs all around the country to Gatorade and their lawsuits with University of Florida. there was no framework for the use of federally-funded research, so the federal government claimed ownership of Gatorade (only after it had blown up) over $42 in research materials. this disagreement (and subsequent settlement) led to the Bayh-Dohl act of 1980 and the proliferation of technology licensing offices at schools across the country.
some other highlights of the museum included exhibits on Tom Petty and Rube Goldberg. there were also hands-on activities like slime-making and a demonstration of an old Reliance printing press. the staff members were great. thanks to Olivia, Sam, Alondra, and Mia for showing me around and to the rest of the staff at the Cade Museum for a wonderful experience.
