Inventor's Studio

I.T.S. (Intelligent Training System), the world's most advanced live fire extinguisher training system.

The fact that fire accounts for over $9 billion in property loss each year in the United States and the majority of these fires can be stopped before growing too large with a single extinguisher, operated by a trained individual. But live fire extinguisher training is expensive and can be dangerous.

I.T.S (Intelligent Training System), designed to provide safe and realistic training at a fraction of the cost of conventional training, leaving no excuse for inexperienced individuals.

Secrets to success: rapport, empathy, persuasion, cooperation and consensus building

Inventor's Studio also shows engineers how be effective communicators—on all levels. In fact, course instructor, Burt Swersey has so effectively implemented some of these life skills into the course, Daniel Goleman author of the international bestseller Emotional Intelligence cites the course in his sequel book Working with Emotional Intelligence.

Excerpt from Working with Emotional Intelligence...

“Burt Swersey’s bright idea came to him when an article I wrote for the New York Times back in September 1995 caught his eye. It was about the Bell Labs study in which stars in an engineering division seemed to owe their success more to emotional intelligence skills than to technical ones, and it inspired Swersey to try something new with his engineering students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

He started his class by telling them about the Bell Labs study and what he called the “five simple secrets of success”: rapport, empathy, persuasion, cooperation, and consensus building. And, he announced, instead of spending the first day of class reviewing engineering basics, they would conduct a learning lab on the five secrets.

“How would you go about establishing rapport with someone you don’t know?” Swersey asked.

As the class, somewhat baffled and tentative at first, offered suggestions, Swersey listed them on the blackboard: “Introduce yourself, look at the person while you talk, ask them a question about themselves, shake hands, tell them about yourself, listen carefully…”

“These sound like the right answers,” Swersey told them. “Now pick someone you don’t know and take three minutes to establish some rapport.”

The students pitched in enthusiastically; the room was filled with their chatter and banter. Swersey had a hard time getting them to stop and focus on the next “secret,” the art of being empathic.”

Financial Support for this course comes from:

• NCIIA, National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance
• Coleman Foundation
• Lutron Electronics Co., Inc.
• Robert M. Collins and Ted A. Dale of Golden, CO