A doctor realizes that an innocent-looking tube is killing his patients. A father cleans up after his toddler and then builds a “sippy” cup that won’t spill. An engineer dreams of a different world and pioneers the cell phone.

How do high-performing inventors come up with solutions like these? Is there a formula for invention? And if so, can anyone learn it?

Kennedy, the former New York Times Magazine Innovation columnist, reveals the imaginative leaps behind the objects we use every day in Inventology: How We Dream Up Things That Change the World.

Inventology illuminates the origins of spray-tan booths, Twitter, rolling suitcases, squirt guns, smoke detectors and many other innovations; in so doing, the book investigates the process that gives birth to breakthroughs and the hidden patterns behind ingenuity.

Drawing upon fresh research and more than 100 interviews with inventors and explorers in a variety of fields, Inventology is a guide that can be applied to pressing problems around the world and in our own lives. Book signing to follow.