Lon Safko joins the greats (Darwin, Wyeth, Edison) as the newest inductee of the Smithsonian Institution’s permanent collection with eighteen of his inventions. His Apple II computer is on display at Apple HQ as being the first Apple to truly save a human life in honor of his amazing invention that restored the will to live for a C3 quadriplegic.

I had the opportunity to interview Lon recently and ask him how he played the instrumental role in founding the now $5.3BN assistive speech technology industry. Lon shared his view of innovation and stories on the inception of this technology which began in 1984. Many of Lon’s inventions were the archetypes to what we now know of as the Dragon Naturally Speaking product, the original Newton (pda) O.S., “Tool Tips“, X-10 Powerhouse, and Microsoft’s Bob O.S.

From paper models to garden hoses to AI and now the Smithsonian, Lon has had an amazing career. He believes that anyone can train his/her mind to see opportunities and deficiencies in the world and learn innovation using what he calls “The Three C’s.” Listen to his amazing interview (35min – 41MB) on the latest episode of the Grid7 Venturecast series.