The inventive tradition in the Davidson household was not a coincidence or an accident.

It was a culture — a way of thinking about the world that understood problems as invitations to design, that approached the patent system as a legitimate avenue for protecting creative work, and that transmitted this understanding from one generation to the next.

This is how traditions are built.

Not through grand institutional programs or government initiatives — though those can matter — but through families and communities that model specific ways of engaging with the world.

The Davidson family modeled invention.