It All Starts With an Idea

Here at Westinghouse, innovation is in our DNA.

It began with George Westinghouse, who received more than 360 patents in his lifetime – the first of which he received 150 years ago for the rotary steam engine. Since then, Westinghouse employees have followed in his footsteps and received thousands of additional patents for inventions.

It was my honor to recently recognize more than 130 U.S.-based inventors who participated in the Westinghouse patent process during our company’s past fiscal year. This included patent recipients, patent applicants and inventors who filed disclosures.

The ideas recognized during this event are quite impressive, as they are ideas that will be translated into future technologies and solutions for the nuclear industry – including, for example, a state-of-the-art smart glass technology to help our global field services employees monitor activities within our customers’ facilities.

Creating innovative solutions like these takes a talented team of technically savvy employees. Here at Westinghouse, we have that in spades. And we also have renewed energy around our innovation process. For example, we organize events called “Kick Start Innovation,” that give employees an opportunity to step out of their everyday roles and collaborate with colleagues on creative solutions for specific industry challenges. In addition, we’re collecting ideas using internal social media tools to make the innovation process more relevant for today’s engineer.

It’s an exciting time at Westinghouse. Our engineers have a steady stream of ideas, and, just like George Westinghouse, we’re turning our great ideas into great technology.