Necessity is the mother of all invention. Sometimes it's good not to have enough time, not enough resources, not enough education. A challenge or problem often times fuels creative efforts to meet the need or solve the problem. Clear limitations aid creativity. Sometimes our best work comes after we've slept on a design problem overnight, perculating on it while resting, dreaming...stretching the mind. I made this fibonacci diagram to remind me of how the parts and the whole are completely interconnected in the creative process. This roughly emulates the spiral of shells we find walking on the beach and other patterns surrounding us from nature.
Creativity is a looping, spiraling process, starting at an initial necessary point where the answering process, the doing process is more akin to a spiral than a circle or a line. While you often come full-circle on a design problem, i.e. you return back to the beginning, it's not really the beginning but a widening of the curving arc which is the creative process. The circle doesn't close on itself. It continues to open up. The spirt of invention is a spiral.
The plenary speech session was kicked off by Scott Johnstone, executive diretor for Vermont Energy Investment Corporation. (VEIC). He set the groundwork for the conference where he shared the results of 
The keynote speaker, Fernando Paige Ruiz also reinforced this notion sharing how he sees how Vermont's innovation stacks up against other states around the nation. He said Vermonters are amazing that we save almost 2% a year in lowered electricty usage. Most states claim this is impossible, it can't be done, but we're showing it can be done. 