The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of American History is planning a new exhibition called Places of Invention. The exhibition will explore several questions about creative communities, including:

- What social, psychological, and spatial elements spark creativity?
- How do these elements give rise to places where invention thrives?
- How does collaboration affect innovation?

Join the Lemelson Center in making the Places of Invention exhibition itself a hot spot of innovation and an environment for sustained learning. Open for submissions April 30 - June 30, 2010.

Submit your ideas and possible solutions for one or all of these design challenges:

1. Design an interactive space
How can Museum visitors build a miniature place of invention within the exhibition? Design an interactive exhibit space on which visitors can build and model their own ideas about hot spots of invention. Ideally, also suggest a mechanism that enables users of a Places of Invention companion website to view the physical exhibit space in real time, and contribute to or comment on what's being built.

2. Design a collaborative activity
How can Museum visitors practice the collaborative skills modeled by known innovators? Design a game, a scavenger hunt, or other activity that enables Museum visitors to solve a problem or complete a task together.

3. Model your place of invention
What aspects of your environment affect your own creative process? Use a virtual environment, computer-based design tools, or manual design tools to model your own place of innovation—actual or imagined.