It’s often said that if you want to be the best, you have to learn from the best. After all, being a successful investor involves drawing wisdom from various sources. Though textbooks and studies are vital sources of information, theory isn’t that useful if you can’t put it into practice. By surrounding yourself with the wisdom of others, you’ll learn how to better apply your knowledge in the field.

So if you’ve been stuck brainstorming ideas for your next invention, it doesn’t hurt to take inspiration from the greats. Here are some of the year’s best inventions across various fields to get your creative juices flowing.

Cultivated Meat

If you’ve ever worried about the carbon footprint of the meat industry while seriously doubting that you could ever go vegan, you don’t need to worry much longer. Food tech company Upside Foods has found a way to mass-produce meat by cultivating animal cells — separate from animals themselves. In 2016 they created a meatball this way, today they’re focusing on chicken, the world’s most consumed meat. Upside Foods’ expansive new facilities in California will use animal component-free cell feed to mass-produce 50,000 pounds of chicken a year.

At-Home Covid Tests

For many people across the world, access to COVID tests is hard to come by, especially in developing countries. Even in Western nations like the US and UK, physical accessibility and affordability remain barriers to extensive COVID testing. Medical technology manufacturer Ellume is changing all that with the first FDA-approved at-home COVID testing kits. Ellume’s analyzer is Bluetooth-enabled, allowing you to get your results via a smartphone app in just 15 minutes — and even send your results directly to your healthcare provider.

A system-on-a-chip

In 2019, Apple announced it was cutting ties with long-time chip supplier Intel and developing its own. The result was the M1 chip, which was released in November 2020. Since the M1 follows the design basics for HDI (high density interconnect) printed circuit boards, it’s powerful enough to be a “system-on-a-chip.” Functions for central processing, graphics, and machine learning — facilitated by over 57 billion transistors — are all contained within dimensions of 10 by 7 inches. Consequently, the M1 is over twice as fast as the Intel i9 and Ryzen 7 CPUs.

Biometric Fobs

Though cybersecurity is increasingly necessary in today’s digital landscape, many find the two-factor authentication to be time-consuming, especially if it fails. YubiKey’s Bio Series aims to fix this with a physical security key. Its three-chip architecture allows for password-less authentication by simply allowing users to register their fingerprint securely and locally on the fob. That way, you won’t need to wait for an SMS code before logging in — simply press your finger to the gray circle on the device. As an added bonus, it doesn’t need any batteries or software to operate.

Every good invention is a product of inspiration. These top examples across various industries are bound to spark some ideas to get you going. However, we’ve previously discussed on the site that the real challenge is finding out how to make that one great idea work. For this, Patents by Don Debelak is always ready to give you some advice.