One Of America's Most Successful Inventors Dean Kamen Talks Segway, Clean Water And Robotics

With 440-plus patents, college dropout turned inventor Dean Kamen is one of the most prolific tinkerers of our time. Though he's perhaps best-known for inventing the Segway, he's been called the next Thomas Edison particularly for his life-changing innovations in treatments aimed at illnesses ranging from diabetes to cancer.

His first invention - which he built during high school - shook up how doctors at Ivy League research hospitals administered chemotherapy to babies. He founded his first medical device company after dropping out of Worcester Polytechnic Institute to market the wearable infusion pump that he created from his college dorm room.

Since founding DEKA Research & Development in 1982, he's also created the HomeChoice portable dialysis machine, a defense department-funded robotic arm and the slingshot water purifier, which runs on a generator that uses cow dung and is backed by Coca-Cola and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Kamen also recently persuaded Toyota to help him bring a newly updated iBOT (the inspirations for the Segway and the most advanced wheelchair on the market at the time) back on the market after Johnson & Johnson  ended its production about a decade ago due to high costs and low volume.

Now, through his nonprofit foundation FIRST, he's focused on exciting students ages 6 to 18 around the globe about robotics, engineering and math. It's been lauded by four US presidents and reaches more than 300,000 annually in 50 countries through its scholarship program and tournament days. FIRST recently announced a partnership with Toyota, and Kamen said he's working with the company to make sure FIRST has a place at the 2020 Olympics, which will be held in Tokyo. Toyota is the largest single sponsor of the event.

Kamen spoke yesterday at the fifth annual Forbes billionaire philanthropy conference. Here are the top five takeaways:

Don't listen to naysayers. "When I’m told absolutely no, it’s a definite maybe."

Collaborate to achieve big. "Innovation is so hard and so frustrating it takes the intersections of people with courage, vision, and resources."

Crazy things can lead to successful products. "[The Segway] was a fun side project. It wasn't the original plan. We mostly fail. Every once in a while a new technology, an old problem and a big idea turn into an innovation. We never sat down to make the Segway. Ever. We (also) never sat down to make what I think would be one of the most important healthcare innovations - the water machine. They both resulted from these intersections of crazy things."

Don't focus too much on planning. "I've never had a business plan. Every project we've ever done was the intersection of somebody with a real need, a real passion to do something and hustling."

Invest in kids' futures. "Whatever your particular focus in philanthropy is, the best shot we have is to find a global set of kids who will stop the self-inflicted wounds that this world has created in our history. True technology could make the first generation ever to grow up communicating, cooperating and using the tools and our future better."