incentives

Perverse Incentives and Personal Greed: A Recipe for Innovation Fatigue

consumer products, corporate, decision making, incentives, innovation / By

A former technical expert at one of the world’s most famous consumer product companies told me of a hiring decision that made $80,000 for one executive, hurt several careers, cost the company millions of dollars, and crushed innovation in a once-promising unit of the company. This recipe for innovation fatigue has numerous variations, but they …

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Judicial and Legislative Fury Against “Business Method” Patents: A Retreat from the Information Age

business models, incentives, patents / By

For big business, life would be simpler without patents. Then success would be determined by factors related to size such as lobbying budget, marketing prowess, and the combined power of your legal team. Upstarts could be squashed and cleared out of the way or acquired for a pittance. That’s not how our economic system is …

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Patents: Sucking the Lifeblood from the Economy??

business models, corporate, economic factors, incentives, innovation, patents, universities / By

There’s an anti-patent sentiment in some parts of the public that argues that they are destroying the economy rather than helping. There is particular resentment against non-practicing entities (NPEs), often called trolls, for owning (and typically acquiring large numbers of) patents for products and processes that they don’t actually use themselves. That sentiment, naturally, is …

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The Quest for Profit: The Mother of Invention, or Its Kidnapper?

business models, creativity, decision making, incentives, innovation, inventing, inventors, leadership, management, metrics, voice of the innovator / By

As we discuss in Conquering Innovation Fatigue, the profit motive can be important for inventors but is often not the real incentive behind the quest to invent. Steps that eliminate the opportunity to profit from invention, though, can be serious barriers to a nation’s innovation potential. The profit motive can be important for prospective innovators. …

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Innovation Through Crowdsourcing: Congratulations to “All Your Shreds Are Belong to U.S.”

business models, collaboration, creativity, energizing factors, incentives, inventing, inventors / By

Contests can be one of the most interesting innovation tools. With the right challenge and incentives, creative groups from across the world can help invent and innovate rapidly. The creativity of crowds fueled by a content was just demonstrated in the Shredder Challenge contest that was launched October 2011 by the U.S. government’s DARPA (the …

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Finding and Retaining Technical and Creative Talent: A Key to Innovation Success in China

China, incentives, innovation / By

Yesterday I had the privilege of visiting the beautiful campus of Tongji University in Shanghai where I was a speaker at a workshop on innovation and managing R&D in China. This international event was organized by a highly respected expert in global R&D management, Dr. Max von Zedtwitz, founder of GLORAD, a firm that helps …

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China Gets Serious about Intellectual Property

China, incentives, innovation, tech transfer, technology, theft / By

Many people in the West think of China as a copier exploiting the IP of the West and generally ignoring IP rights. In reality, China, the nation where I now live, has made steady and rapid progress in building an IP system and in enforcing and respecting IP rights. Companies are increasingly able to protect …

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How Great Leaders Inspire Action – and an Innovation Lesson from Samuel P. Langley and the Wright Brothers

incentives, innovation, inventors / By

Simon Sinek’s famous TED presentation, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” includes a great lesson on innovation. He discusses the race for flight between the well-funded, highly educated, and widely acclaimed Samuel P. Langley and the unfunded, unknown Wright Brothers. Langley was after fame and wealth while the Wright Brothers were pursuing a dream with all …

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Children Present: Innovators Beware

external fatigue, incentives, regulations, risk / By

One of the most challenging areas for innovators, entrepreneurs, and businesses of any kind now is field of children’s products. Innovation fatigue has reached new heights in this area due to “external innovation fatigue”–the kind that comes when outside forces from government and others, often with the best of innovations, deliver hard-to-evade punches to the …

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The Invention of the Computer: Pulitzer-Prize Novelist Will Tell the Untold Story

disruptive innovation, fatigue factors, incentives, innovation, inventors, theft, universities / By

I am delighted to see Wired Magazine feature a story about the new book on the largely untold story of one of the original inventors of the computer. Nearly everyone has heard the standard story of the invention of the ENIAC computer at Penn State by a team led by John Mauchly and J. Presper …

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