Lilly Born was eight years old when she struck upon her innovation gold. Her grandfather had Parkinson’s and was constantly spilling his drink whenever he tried to set his cup down. Her grandmother had to do so much cleaning up, and Lilly wanted to do something about it. That’s when she came up with the Kangaroo cup, a three-legged cup specifically designed to be easy to set down and hard to spill.

The kangaroo cup was a simple response to a simple problem. It is a great example of the typical, “Everyone saw the apple fall, but only Newton wondered why.” The innovation was not necessarily technological, but rather a repurposing of existing technology. She created a cup with three handles, which also doubled as legs to keep the cup from spilling when set down. Anybody could have done this, but nobody had the wit or bravery to do so until Lily.

Lilly has since sold $100,000 of kangaroo cups through crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo. She founded her own company, Imagiroo LLC., to handle the distribution of the cups.

Her ongoing message is that she thought of this idea as only an eight-year-old. If she could do it, anybody can.

Where I find inspiration in this story is the fact that it was not an insane technological innovation, or social revelation. Instead, she took a typical item and applied her observation to it. It gives me hope that even if the idea I have is small, it can still be successful so long as I put effort behind it.

From this story it is apparent to me that we must observe others, not just ourselves, to get a full picture of our entrepreneurial space. Sometimes the sight of someone else struggling with a problem can either give us an idea or bring up a dormant idea we forgot about and give it new life.