Dev Patnaik raves about his big ideas: an “empathy dashboard” and–tongue firmly in cheek–a hand pug dog.

Question: What big ideas have you had recently?

Dev Patnaik: I had three big ideas in one year and one of which I’m patenting right now. I’ll share with you the one that is in the process of being patented.

The big idea number one was that empathy was actually the source of innovation.

Big idea number two was about actually coming up with an innovation dashboard that actually helps companies play to their strengths by focusing on what they did well and not on stuff that they didn’t do well.

Big idea number three, was the pug dog. The pug dog was, I looked at the world and I thought there is no really great way to entertain my daughter and there is-- You can make a dog like this but that doesn’t really look like a dog. I think you make a dog that looks like this but that’s two-dimensional and yoyo has only one ear and I looked around and there’s no great ways to make a hand sign which looks like a dog so I came up with one and that’s what I call pug dog. And the way you got a pug dog is you make a fist, right, and then you lift up two sides like the ears and you drop down the tug and that’s the pug dog. Patent pending.

Conducted on: June 24, 2009.