Development Impact and You — Practical tools to trigger & support social innovation

A panel of 26 expert judges pored through more than 1,700 entries and selected the best products, services, and ideas of 2016.

You may have seen some pretty unusual ways to make artificial organs, but Vanderbilt University might have just topped them all. Its researchers have developed a technique for making the templates of artificial organs using a cotton candy machine -- that's right, the machine whipping up treats at the county fair could effectively save your life. The team discovered that the same centrifugal process that melts sugar into delicious, fluffy strands also turns hydrogel into cell-friendly microfibers that behave like capillaries in the human body.

"College students create nail polish that changes colors when exposed to date rate drugs." #innovation

Innovation and originality are close cousins. We think of creative innovators as people with new ideas. But to read Malcolm Gladwell on the subject is to be reminded of a distinction: An innovator may not be the one with the new idea — but with a new take on an old idea. Robert Siegel interviews Gladwell, who wrote "Creation Myth: Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about innovation" in the May 16th issue of The New Yorker.

The bold ideas and brilliant urbanites who are helping to build the cities of America’s future.