The Story of Higher Order Innovation

9/30/2019

The Past

Higher Order Innovation began with a doctoral student's dedication to make the art, creativity, and beauty of engineering accessible to a wider audience. Tom Frederick founded Higher Order Innovation, LLC, in 2013 while working on his graduate studies at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Higher Order Innovation began as an engineering design firm, providing engineering services throughout all phases of the product design and development process primarily in the eastern Nebraska region. Tom's interests in a wide array of disciplines has allowed him to gain valuable expertise in medical devices, robotics, agriculture, mechanical design, patent drafting, start-up businesses, product development, and academic research. This diversity of experience allows Higher Order Innovation to approach any project from a systems level, considering all aspects from early start-ups prototype development through full scale production.

One of our first clients was the CREATE Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to aiding educational organizations, students, teachers and mentors in advancing the education of our youth in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). Higher Order Innovation developed open source robotics tournament products for CREATE, allowing more schools and more students to participate in competitive robotics programs.

The Present

No project has been able to excite us as much as educational robotics.
In 2018, Higher Order Innovation decided to expand it's offerings into other educational robotics products, beyond the tournament hardware we had developed for the CREATE Foundation and in 2019 we have decided to focus solely on STEM education. Here are the products that we currently have available for purchase:

Apollo Microcontroller, including App Upgrade and Joystick Controller Package
Atlas Robotics Kit, including Open Program Structural Package
CREATE Open Tournament Hardware, including Hermes Reoff Switch and Athena Control System
CREATE Drones Program Hardware, including drones and accessories

The Future

We want to bring the excitement and passion that we see at robotics tournaments into the classrooms for all students. We want to connect with teachers as well as students. We want engineering and robotics education to be the norm in schools. Higher Order Innovation's mission statement is Innovation through Education. We believe that everyone has the potential for true innovation within themselves, they only need to be given the opportunities to show the world what they are capable of becoming.

Will you help us?