Center for Social Innovation

The energy makeovers unfolding in Atlanta in April 2007 were pretty standard fare: a house received a solar panel on its roof, a hybrid sedan replaced a gas-guzzling truck, and wind turbines appeared on the horizon. What was exceptional, however, was that 9- to 16-year-olds were executing these green upgrades using Lego robots, on Lego models, in Lego landscapes.

The kids were finalists in the FIRST Lego League challenge, an annual competition that brings together teams of students from all over the world to show off their engineering chops. And powering their robots was sophisticated software developed by National Instruments (NI), an Austin, Texas-based scientific equipment company.

For the past 10 years, NI has been as inventive in its ... Read more