A book on World War II teaches a lesson for today on innovation. In Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Pulitzer-prize winning author Thomas E. Ricks (New York: Penguin, 2017), we learn about some of the reasons England struggled to defend itself effectively in dealing with Germany. A key problem discussed by Ricks …
Innovation Fatigue: How Britain Almost Lost the War Against Hitler Read More »
Abraham Lincoln said that the patent system “added the fuel of interest to the fires of genius.†Today the fires of genius and the fire of innovation itself is getting doused with something less helpful than fuel. These fires are being cooled and, in some cases, extinguished with harsh attacks on the IP rights that …
More Cold Water on the Fire of Innovation: Unnecessary Patent Reform Read More »
Many large companies take a tortoise approach to innovation and stay as hidden within their shells as possible, even some who advocate open innovation. Tortoise companies may have creative R&D staff, including many scientists doing good work, but they keep these inventors hidden in the shell rather than encouraging them to publish or present their …
Tortoise Innovation: The Problem with Hiding in a Shell Read More »
The new intellectual property book by Nick Nssing, Patents and Strategic Inventing: The Corporate Inventor’s Guide to Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantage (McGraw-Hill, 2013) is a refreshing guide to help inventors and leaders in corporations. It is a collaborative work with a variety of contributors (myself included) providing a few chapters in addition to the excellent …
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. …
The Quest for Profit: The Mother of Invention, or Its Kidnapper? Read More »
I recently had the privilege of meeting Larry French, CEO of Griffon Aerospace (also see Wikipedia’s article on Griffon). He is an inventor, an entrepreneur, a pilot, and the brains behind several major product innovations, including the Lionheart 6-passenger airplane and a host of unmanned aircraft that are disrupting the aviation world with their high …
Griffon Aerospace: Lessons from the Pilot Behind a Fleet of Low-Cost Unmanned Aircraft Read More »
During the CoDev 2011 conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, I was impressed with a speech given by a local CEO, John (“Jay”) Rogers of Local Motors in Chandler, Arizona. This small company designs exciting new vehicles using design contests that are open to the public. Their rapidly growing community (12,000 participants so far) contributes designs and …
Local Motors: Successful Crowdsourcing as a Design Tool for Innovation Read More »
“Quorum sensing” refers to the abilities of some organisms, especially bacteria, to sense the presence of others and begin collective action such as forming a biofilm. It’s a critical area of research in immunology. There are also lessons from quorum sensing that need to be applied to business and innovation. Quorum sensing, in a sense, …
Innovators and business leaders doing their best to achieve commercial success need to understand the set of innovation fatigue factors that they face. These include personal factors due to the bad behavior of individuals; corporate or organizational fatigue factors reflecting inadequate systems, culture, or flawed judgment; and external fatigue factors due to the burdens of …
I was reviewing some information from one Venture Capital firm that described their annual efforts. Far from the laid-back lifestyle that some people imagine, this successful VC firm spent much of their year traveling to meet with over 6,000 companies. A few hundred would be selected and screened more carefully, and then a dozen or …