There are a lot of ongoing attempts in the 3d printing community to replicate the Wilson airless basketball. I expect there will be similar efforts in to produce something similar to what the students created. Wonder if they applied for a patent and if that would prevent clones from being made.

There's a lot of value in coming up with a clear problem statement and giving it to the right people. We see this with DARPA, at a much bigger scale.

A lot of the value in engineering leadership is in making sure the right problems are being solved.

The funny part here is they say product, but in reality as soon as this ships someone will hit it with a hammer, figure out the internal layout with some calipers and we'll have an STL lol

Can’t we just look for the patent application rather than wait two years for a concrete product?

There's a lot of value in coming up with a clear problem statement and giving it to the right people. We see this with DARPA, at a much bigger scale.