Sitting in a hot office in Kansas City, Mo., in 1992, I was trying to do the impossible: develop a perpetual motion machine. I now know how far away I was from such an invention, but it might have been one of the best summers of my life. I learned about magnets, friction, momentum, energy, and, most importantly, I learned about the innovation process.

I didn’t develop a perpetual motion machine (obviously) and nowadays I make sure my children understand that in our household, we obey the laws of thermodynamics.