Invention Of Necessity

Indianapolis Business Journal:

A music lover, Kathy Osborn was certain she could find a musical mobile that would play a variety of soothing songs long enough to lull him back to the land of nod. She was wrong.

After searching brick-and-mortar and Internet stores, Osborn found mobiles that played mechanical-sounding tunes for just a few minutes before needing to be rewound—an act that inevitably awakened Harper just as he was dozing off.

What’s a working mom to do? The answer for Osborn was to invent a baby mobile that not only interfaces with an iPod or other media player but also projects soothing visual images onto a crib-mounted screen.

Osborn’s idea proved so revolutionary that Whirlpool Brand selected her as one of five winners of their 2006 Whirlpool Brand Mother of Invention Grant contest. Whirlpool sponsors the annual contest to support and recognize moms who identify problems and invent ways to fix them.

“Moms are the greatest consumers on the planet, but they don’t get credit for it,” said Audrey Reed-Granger, Whirlpool’s director of consumer insight. “We really want to acknowledge the fact that a lot of times these are the best innovators in the world.”