“Creativity is the key to a brighter future,” say education and business experts. Here is how schools and parents can encourage this important skill in children.

If Dick Drew had listened to his boss in 1925 , we might not have the product that we now think of as great importance: a new type of tape. Drew worked for the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company. At work he developed a kind of material strong enough to hold things together. But his boss told him not to think more about the idea. Finally, using his own time, Drew improved the tape, which now is used everywhere by many people. And his former company learned from its mistake. Now it encourages people to spend 15 percent of their working time just thinking about and developing new ideas.

Creativity is not something one is just born with, nor is it necessarily a character of high intelligence. The fact that a person is highly intelligent does not mean that he uses it creatively. Creativity is the matter of using the resources one has to produce new ideas that are good for something.

Unfortunately, schools have not tried to encourage creativity. With strong attention to test results and the development of reading, writing and mathematical skills, many educators give up creativity for correct answers. The result is that children can gain information but can’t recognize ways to use it in new situations. They may know the rules correctly but they are unable to use them to work out practical problems.

It is important to give children choices. From the earliest age, children should be allowed to make decisions and understand their results. Even if it’s choosing between two food items for lunch, decision­making helps thinking skills. As children grow older, parents should try to let them decide how to use their time or spend their money. This is because the most important character of creative people is a very strong desire to find a way out of trouble.

In rural Tabasco, Mexico, a community of 50 3D printed homes is now under construction.

The US-based nonprofit New Story has teamed up with the tech company ICON to build the world’s first 3D printed neighborhood. It’s part of their project working to fight global homelessness.

Brett Hagler, the company’s CEO and co-founder, says the machine starts at the very bottom of the home, laying the cement (水泥) all the way to top where a roof is then placed. Start to finish, the entire process takes just 24 hours to print. The company hires local workers to attach the roof and doors, Hagler says.

Each 3D printed home will have two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bathroom. Families there are living for less than $3 a day. Each home can stand hurricanes and medium-level earthquakes, Hagler says. Being strong enough to stand natural disasters has a “generational influence,” he says, because families can pass the home down from generation to generation.

New Story started in 2010 after a disastrous earthquake ruined Haiti, leaving millions injured and homeless. Seeing the damage “broke my heart,” Hagler says. Therefore, he founded New Story to be able to face large disasters with new robotic technology that can quickly rebuild communities.

Now, using New Story’s printer, known as “Vulcan 2,” they are able to quickly build safe shelters. “Besides, we are free of exorbitant operation costs. We bring in the technology to make it faster, cheaper and eventually a better product,” Hagler says, “and then be able to have local labor to do other necessary jobs.”

Hagler says they don’t want to keep this innovation to themselves. After their project in Tabasco, they hope to service other nonprofits who are working toward ending global homelessness.

Thermoelectric generators turn waste heat into electricity without producing greenhouse gas emissions, like a free lunch. But the high cost of these devices has prevented their widespread use. Now, researchers have found a way to make cheap thermae-lectrices that work just as well. The work could pave the way for greener car engines, and other energy-generating devices.

“This looks like a very smart way to realize high performance,” says Li-Dong Zhao, a materials scientist. He notes there are still a few more steps before these materials can become high-performing. However, he says, “This will be used in the not too far future.”

Thermoelectrics are semiconductor devices placed on a hot surface. That gives them a hot side and a cool side. If a device allows the hot side to warm up the cool side, the electricity stops flowing. A device’s success at preventing this, as well as its ability to conduct electrons, feeds into a score known as the figure of merit, or ZT.

Researchers have produced thermoelectric materials with increasing ZTs. The record came in 2014 when Mercouri Kanatzidis came up with a tin selenide with a ZT of 3.1. Yet the material was too fragile to work with. “For practical applications, it’s a non-star-ter,” Kanatzidis says.

Getting through that door will still take some time. The tin selenide the team makes is mixed with Na, creating a “p-type” material that conducts positive charges. To make working devices, researchers also need an “n-type” version to conduct negative charges.

Zhao’s team is now working on making an n-type version. Once successful, researchers should have a clear path to making a new generation of super-efficient thermoelectric genera-tors. Those could be installed everywhere from automobile exhaust pipes to water heaters and industrial smelters to scavenge some of the 65% of fossil fuel energy that winds up as waste heat.