Archive for inventors
The Quest for Profit: The Mother of Invention, or Its Kidnapper?
Posted by: | CommentsAs 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. However, a focus on profits can be utterly destructive to innovation within a corporation, where the incentives to those who lead other would-be innovators can create new barriers that kill the innovation future of the company. Ironically, what can be a helpful incentive for innovation to an individual can easily become a disincentive once distorted by the internal workings of a corporation. This is illustrated in recent analysis from Clayton Christensen. See an overview in the article “Clayton Christensen: How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy” at Forbes.com. Christensen argues that ratio-based metrics for profitability distort corporate thinking and reward behavior that ultimately destroys the future of the corporation by creating short-term benefits in apparent profitability. We illustrate a related problem in the book with the Apple Tree Analogy, in which metrics for short-term profitability for an apple harvester get a dramatic boost when the apple trees are toppled, making it much faster to harvest the fruit. The future, though, becomes barren.
Corporations need to carefully consider the metrics they use for profitability, as Christensen teaches, and unlearn some of the sacred concepts they were given in business schools. They should also go one step further an consider the impact of their metrics on not just the long-term growth of the company as a whole, but also the individual innovator and the innovation culture within the company. Listening to the voice of the innovator inside the corporation should be an important exercise for its top leaders.
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 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). DARPA wanted to know what could be achieved with computer tools in reassembling shredded documents to recover the originals. Since many different approaches were possible, this was an excellent candidate for crowdsourcing. Rather than hire a huge team for a short while to pursue many different paths, or use a small team pursuing many paths over a long period of time, just throw this one out to the crowds for healthy competition. The objective in this competition was to create a system for reconstructing shredded documents. The system would have to demonstrate success by reassembling the shreds from five documents whose shredded remains were posted on a website. As reported at Gizmag, the “All Your Shreds Are Belong to U.S.” team won the $50,000 prize for this contest by assembling all five documents two days before the Dec. 4 deadline. Given the hours that the winning team put into this competition, $50,000 was a very good deal for DARPA (and the American taxpayers) and not such a good deal for the winning team. If you consider all the thousands of additional hours put in by many other teams working on the competition, DARPA got quite a lot for a small investment.
Companies can and do this kind of thing as well, with varying degrees of success. Capturing the imagination of people with the skills needed for the problem is the key. Prizes help, along with fame and bragging rights. Intellectual property issues can get in the way for some companies. I’ll point to Local Motors as one of the leading examples of for-profit crowdsourcing. Their business model is sophisticated and highly refined, something I’ve written about here previously.
As for the hilarious title of the winning group, you might enjoy reviewing the history of the classic phrase, “All your base are belong to us.”
Ask the leaders of a business how much they spend on printing. The response can be interesting, even hilarious. It’s an expense that is easily overlooked yet can be substantial. Few companies know if they are being overbilled. Decisions may be handled by cloudy processes where influences other than quality and value sometimes hold sway. Indeed, the fundamentals of the procurement process in many companies leave inefficiency if not outright abuse. The problem isn’t just in printing, either. Many parts and services handled through standard procurement systems can result in excessive costs. Enter an interesting business model innovation: E-Lynxx. For added spice, we’re talking patented business model innovation. Yes, E-Lynxx has a business model enhanced with the aura of two US patents.
William Gindlesperger is the founder and CEO of E-Lynxx. My source tells me he has over 25 years of experience in the printing industry, where found that the decision making process was antiquated and left companies vulnerable in many ways. He pursued business model innovation to come up with a system that could make the process transparent and more efficient. Under his business model, be provides software and services up front at not cost, getting paid only when the client saves real money from his work. Then he gets a cut of the savings. Low risk.
When a company turns to E-Lynxx, they receive software and training in how to use E-Lynxx’s open auction system. Bids are offered to a large array of qualified vendors who then bid on the deal. The vendors can see the competitive bids and so can the client. This transparency helps bring costs down substantially, often reducing print costs by 25-50%. E-Lynxx gets part of the savings. What’s not to like? Well, those who aren’t getting as much gravy might not like it, but if it’s your business, these kind of cost savings should be welcome news.
Here’s claim 1 of E-Lynxx’s first patent, 6,397,197, assigned to the CEO and founder himself:
1. A method for competitive bidding by print information product vendors comprising steps of: inputting a plurality of vendor records into a storage of a general purpose computer, each of said vendor records having a data field identifying a print information product vendor and a buyer identification data field identifying a buyer that said vendor is associated with, at least one of said vendor records having a vendor capability data representing a set of vendor manufacturing capabilities of the vendor identified by said record; inputting a buyer’s invitation-for-bid data into said general purpose computer, said buyer’s invitation-for-bid data having a buyer identification data, and having an invitation for bid on a print information product job from said buyer; calculating a vendor requirement data from said buyer’s invitation-for-bid data, said vendor requirement data representing a set of vendor manufacturing capabilities required for performing said print information product job; comparing said vendor requirement data to a plurality of said vendor records having a buyer identification data field identifying the buyer from which said buyer’s invitation-for-bid data was received; identifying at least one vendor record as qualified, based on said comparing; transmitting a vendor’s invitation-for-bid data based on said buyer’s invitation-for-bid data to each vendor identified by said at least one vendor record; inputting into said general purpose computer a plurality of bid data, each from one of said vendors to which said vendor’s invitation-for-bid data was transmitted, each of said bid data representing a bid price; identifying a bid data from said received bid data having the lowest represented bid price; outputting a selected vendor data representing the identity of the vendor corresponding to the bid data identified by said identifying step; and transmitting an order to the vendor represented by said selected vendor data.
Here’s claim 1 of their second patent, US 7,451,106:
1. A method for facilitating a buyer’s selection of a vendor via automated comparison of records and bidding by vendors of customized goods or services via a computer operated system, comprising steps of: prior to receiving job data from a buyer pertaining to a job for which the buyer seeks a vendor, receiving electronic communications from a plurality of vendors, the electronic communications being used in establishing a plurality of vendor records which are stored in an electronic memory associated with the computer system, the vendor records corresponding to each of a plurality of vendors and having vendor capability data identifying a plurality of capabilities for said vendor to provide a customized good or service; each buyer using the system generating an electronic communication providing information identifying a plurality of vendors for inclusion in a pool of vendors associated with said buyer to potentially receive a job solicitation, wherein the system stores electronic data sufficient to identify every vendor pool and its association with a corresponding buyer based upon the buyer transmitted vendor pool identification information which occurs prior to analysis of job data pertaining to a job for which bids are sought by or on behalf of the buyer; receiving an electronic communication defining a job data from or on behalf of at least one buyer, after said buyer’s vendor pool is determined, said job data including a job descriptor data which specifies a plurality of characteristics of said customized good or service for which said buyer wishes a bid; automatically comparing via a computer processor said vendor records to said job data, wherein said comparing includes comparing said plurality of characteristics for said customized good or service with corresponding plural capabilities for vendors from the pool of vendors associated with said buyer; automatically identifying via a computer processor at least one subset from the buyer’s associated pool of vendors as qualified for receiving the solicitation, based on said comparison; thereafter transmitting the solicitation to only selected members from the identified subset of the buyer’s associated pool of vendors; receiving bid response data from at least one of said vendors which received said solicitation, said bid response data identifying each of the vendors from which it was received and a bid price; and outputting to said buyer an electronic communication providing at least one of said bid response data.
And here’s claim 1 of 7,788,143:
1. A method for facilitating a buyer’s selection of a vendor via automated comparison of records and bidding by vendors for customized goods or services via a computer operated system, comprising the steps of: prior to processing job data from a buyer pertaining to a job for which the buyer seeks a vendor, receiving and processing electronic communications from a plurality of vendors, the electronic communications being used in establishing a plurality of vendor records which are stored in an electronic memory associated with the computer system, the vendor records corresponding to each of a plurality of vendors and having vendor capability data identifying a plurality of capabilities for said vendor to provide a customized good or service; receiving an electronic communication from or on behalf of any buyer using the system which provides information identifying a plurality of vendors for inclusion in a pool of vendors associated with the buyer to potentially receive a job solicitation, and storing electronic data sufficient to identify every vendor pool and its association with a corresponding buyer based upon the received electronic communications from the buyers providing vendor pool identification information, the vendor pool identification information being processed prior to analysis of job data pertaining to a job for which bids are sought by or on behalf of the buyer; receiving an electronic communication defining a job data from or on behalf of at least one buyer after the buyer’s vendor pool is determined, the job data including a job descriptor data which specifies a plurality of characteristics of said customized good or service for which the buyer wishes a bid; automatically comparing via a computer processor said vendor records to said job data, wherein said comparing includes comparing said plurality of characteristics for said customized good or service with corresponding plural capabilities for vendors from the vendor pool of vendors associated with the buyer; automatically identifying via a computer processor at least one subset from the buyer’s associated pool of vendors as qualified for receiving the solicitation, based on said comparison; thereafter transmitting the solicitation to only selected members from the identified subset of the buyer’s associated pool of vendors; receiving bid response data from at least one of said vendors which received said solicitation, said bid response data identifying a bid price for the corresponding vendor; and outputting to said buyer an electronic communication providing at least one of said bid response data.
Another patent is still pending.
Business method patents are still alive and can play important roles in some companies. Whether they are needed or not for this company, I like the innovative approach that E-Lynxx is taking to bring the procurement process into the light where more efficient transactions can occur with large costs savings.
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 their heart, overcoming obstacles and “innovation fatigue factors” that Langley would never face. Their persistence and passion made the difference.
“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, results in “intelligent” collective decisions that are not made by a central brain but through the sharing of signals or other information between individuals, none of whom sees the big picture or understands the meaning of all the available data. The free market’s mechanisms for optimizing supply and demand through the collective information transmitted by price is one analogy in the business world. But let’s look at lessons specifically from the quorum sensing of one ant species that lives its life in a hostile, frequently shifting, rocky environment–sound familiar?–where constant change is required. This comes from Wikipedia’s article on Quorum Sensing:
Colonies of the ant Temnothorax albipennis nest in small crevices between rocks. When the rocks shift and the nest is broken open, these ants must quickly choose a new nest to move into. During the first phase of the decision-making process, a small portion of the workers leave the destroyed nest and search for new crevices. When one of these scout ants finds a potential nest, she assesses the quality of the crevice based on a variety of factors including the size of the interior, the number of openings (based on light level), and the presence or absence of dead ants. The worker then returns to the destroyed nest, where it will wait for a short period before recruiting other workers to follow her to the nest she found using a process called tandem running. The waiting period is inversely related to the quality of the site; for instance, a worker that has found a poor site will wait longer than a worker that encountered a good site. As the new recruits visit the potential nest site and make their own assessment of its quality, the number of ants visiting the crevice increases. During this stage ants may be visiting many different potential nests. However, because of the differences in the waiting period the number of ants in the best nest will tend to increase at the greatest rate. Eventually, the ants in this nest will sense that the rate at which they encounter other ants has exceeded a particular threshold, indicating that the quorum number has been reached. Once the ants sense a quorum, they return to the destroyed nest and begin rapidly carrying the brood, queen, and fellow workers to the new nest. Scouts that are still tandem-running to other potential sites are also recruited to the new nest and the entire colony moves. Thus although no single worker may have visited and compared all of the available options, quorum sensing enables the colony as a whole to quickly make good decisions about where to move.
The standard Corporate model of centralized new product development and decision making has its advantages, but also many limitations. When rapid growth or adaptation is necessary, innovation often works best when many minds can contribute their talents, insights, networks, and scouting activities to the search for fruitful new places to colonize. If decisions are fully centralized, they take forever and many good spots will be ignored. More rapid and efficient pursuit of innovation requires distributed authority and the involvement of many and systems that can tap and respond to the efforts of many without the endless waiting for one all-knowing top dog to sift through the data and make a decision. How flexible is your organization, really? How distributed and dilute is the power to act on innovation opportunities? What systems do you have to tap the knowledge, skills, and networks of all employees?
Horn of Innovation Schematic
The Horn of Innovation vs. the Funnel
The Invention of the Computer: Pulitzer-Prize Novelist Will Tell the Untold Story
Posted by: | CommentsI 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 Eckert Jr. However, as is so often the case in the world of innovation, those who get public credit for an invention may not be the original inventors. In many cases, one can make a case that key elements of a successful invention were borrowed or even stolen from a neglected inventor who deserves at least some of the credit.
In “Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novelist Tells the Tale of the World’s First Computer” by Gary Wolf, we learn that John Vincent Atanasoff with his partner Clifford Berry were already working in the 1930s on assembling a computer in the basement of the physics building at Iowa State University. Their invention was finished in 1942, four years before ENIAC was finished. About the size of a large desk, the Atanasoff-Berry computer (ABC) could do laborious calculations rapidly. It was relatively unknown, but was known and admired by other inventors working on related problems, including some of the team that would develop ENIAC.
Now a novelist will help set the record straight. Jane Smiley, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, has written The Man Who Invented the Computer to tell Atanasoff’s story. He had a successful career, but his magnum opus, the computer, was “forgotten until the late 1960s, when a legal battle broke out over the patents that the ENIAC project leaders had filed on basic computing concepts. In the course of the bruising litigation between the Sperry Rand Corporation, which had purchased the ENIAC patents, and Honeywell, which wanted to break them, it was proven that the ENIAC team stole key ideas from Atanasoff. The patents were declared invalid by a federal judge. But Atanasoff’s achievement never became widely known or celebrated.”
Smiley learned about his life at Iowa State, where Smiley studied and taught.
[At Iowa State,] she met someone who plays a minor, ignominious role in her tale: a professor who told her that, as a graduate student, he had been the one to dismantle and throw away the prototype of some strange calculating device that had been left behind in the basement of the physics building. The first digital computer was lost. “He ultimately went on to become the head of the computer science department,” Smiley says, “and he told me that destroying that computer was one of the great regrets of his life.” It is out of such personal twists and ironies—a novelist’s materials—that Smiley builds her tale, capturing both Atanasoff’s genius and, at the same time, the forces of chance that influence invention.
It is of such twists and ironies that the journeys of many other great inventors are formed, some of whom we discuss in Conquering Innovation Fatigue. The problems that deprive inventors and innovators of the due credit and reward for their work are often part of the innovation fatigue factors that can wear innovators down and decrease incentives for innovation for many. There are things inventors can do to improve the odds of success, and of receiving credit for their work. May great inventors never be forgotten!
Graphene: A flat layer of carbon atoms bonded in a honeycomb crystal lattice a single atom thick.
gbrumfiel writes
“As we discussed on Tuesday, Andre Geim won this year’s Nobel prize in physics for graphene, but he never patented it. In an interview with Nature News, he explains why: ‘We considered patenting; we prepared a patent and it was nearly filed. Then I had an interaction with a big, multinational electronics company. I approached a guy at a conference and said, “We’ve got this patent coming up, would you be interested in sponsoring it over the years?” It’s quite expensive to keep a patent alive for 20 years. The guy told me, “We are looking at graphene, and it might have a future in the long term. If after ten years we find it’s really as good as it promises, we will put a hundred patent lawyers on it to write a hundred patents a day, and you will spend the rest of your life, and the gross domestic product of your little island, suing us.” That’s a direct quote.’”
While some people, including some in the anti-patent community, see this as a self-evident case for the problem with patents, it’s actually just the opposite, in my opinion. Tim’s a sharp thinker and great entrepreneur, but I have to disagree on this one.
Look at the story again. A genius on the verge of filing a foundational patent for a major breakthrough in technology approaches a large corporation who might benefit from the technology. The company learns that the inventor is about to file a patent. A valid patent would mean that the company would have to pay royalties for the invention, perhaps very expensive royalties. If no patent is filed, the company can use the technology for free and develop its own patents without having to cross-license or worry about what Andre Geim owns. Hmm, which would be better: paying a lot, or paying nothing? Having to work with an inventor or tech transfer office or new patent owner who may end up thinking an invention is worth billions, or having the whole thing pretty much gratis? Tough call, but I think the corporate leader was quick to recognize the advantages to nipping the patent threat in the bud. How could he talk the inventor out of a patent? What negotiating tactic to deploy? ah, how about the Hindenburg? That’s where you explain to the other party that their intended course of action would be a flaming disaster, with burning bodies falling out of the sky–oh, the humanity!–resulting in the adversary becoming toast themselves.
The Hindenburg: A flaming disaster and a common negotiating trick
Baloney! All bluff and bluster. But the intimidation and scare tactics work. “OK, OK, I won’t file my patent. Sorry for even thinking about that. Now I see that patents don’t help the little guy, Mr. Big. Here, take what I’ve got for free. I’m just honored to watch you commercialize my work.”
Patents are the great equalizer. It’s what gives lone inventors a fighting chance against the big corporation that wants to take what they’ve got for free. It’s not easy and may not work, but with patents you’ve got a chance and corporations know it. Good ones respect that and will work with out. Others will try to take what you’ve got anyway, or better yet if they can, talk you out of pursuing a patent. Without one, you’ve already surrendered. You might as well throw the keys of your car to any passing stranger and hope they will pay you someday after they drive away.
The story isn’t about why patents don’t help the little guy. In fact, I think it’s about how much some big corporations despise and loathe patents in the hands of little guys. So much so that they would make outrageous statements to trick a brilliant scientists into NOT doing the one thing that could have helped him most: filing a patent. Instead, he handed them his inventions for free. Score one for the big guys.
It would be fun to go back in time and be with Dr. Geim when he was given the Hindenburg treatment. I’d like to ask a quick question of the corporate executive who made the threat:
Wow, 100 patents a day. That’s so amazing, you know, because the world’s most prolific patent filers like IBM and Canon average less than 20 filings a day, and I would be surprised if they ever hit 100 patents a day, and certainly not on one single project and certainly not over an extended period of time. So how many US patents did your company get last year? Wait, it’s right here at USPTO.gov – hey, based in your pathetic past filing rate, it looks like you could never ramp up to 100 a day. You’re trying to spook me. So just what are you afraid of? Oh, I see, my patent. Nice try, Mr. Big. I’m going to file, especially now that I see how much you care. Now go ahead and hire a hundred lawyers and create your own little fiscal Hindenburg, or we can talk about collaboration.
Oh, one more thing. You need to work on that Hindenburg act. The flames shooting out of your ears were a bit freaky.
Chemical engineers interested in innovation and entrepreneurship should consider attending the AIChE 2010 Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City. On Wednesday, Nov. 10, I will chair a session featuring four outstanding speakers on topics that should be of interest to many engineers, including university researchers, corporate researchers, and managers. If you are conducting research that could lead to a new business, if you are involved in leading or managing R&D, if you are part of an effort where intellectual property could make a difference, then you should attend our session, “Intellectual Assets in the Digital Era.” You need to register for this conference through AIChE.
Time: Wednesday, November 10, 2010: 8:30 AM-11:00 AM
Location: Salt Palace Convention Center, Grand Ballroom G, Salt Lake City, UT
Chair: Jeff Lindsay, Director of Solution Development, Innovationedge, Neenah, WI
Co-Chair: Ken Horton, Gore School of Business, Westminster College, Salt Lake City, UT
Schedule of Papers and Abstracts:
8:30 AM, Paper #406A, “Business Development, IP, and Manufacturing Success: Perspectives From Utah’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership” by David Sorensen, Executive Director of Utah’s Manufacturing Extension Program. (See biographical information below.)
Abstract: The Manufacturing Extension Partnership of Utah has assisted many companies in strengthening their strategy for success and continued growth. We will discuss what it takes to advance your business, including lessons relative to leadership, vision, intellectual property, and coping with changing regulations and policies.
9:10 AM, Paper #406b, “The Role of IP in Successful Startups,” Mike Alder, Director of Technology Transfer, Brigham Young University.
Abstract: Many AIChE members will be involved with a startup at some point in their career. While the capabilities of the management team is of utmost importance, in numerous cases, the success of the startup also depends on the quality of its intellectual property. In this era, an IP-savvy team can take several steps to secure competitive advantage and realize greater value from the technology, products, or services the company offers. This presentation will draw upon experience with many startups and startup teams and will provide guidance to researchers, business leaders, and future entrepreneurs on how to better prepare for success.
9:45 AM, Paper #406c, “An Introduction to IP Law: The Underpinnings of Intellectual Assets,” Ken Horton, Kirton & McConkie, Salt Lake City, UT
Abstract: An understanding of the basics of intellectual property law can help chemical engineers in advancing their own research, in evaluating competitive efforts, in building their own business, or in general advancing their career. This presentation will cover some of the key concepts that engineers should know, including the nature of patents, the different kinds of patents (provisional, utility, design), the role of trademarks and copyrights, what it takes to be patentable, and how changes in patent law may affect your career and business.
10:20 AM, Paper #406d, “Cost-Effective Pursuit of IP in a Down Economy,” by Jonathan Lee
Abstract: How does one get the most protection and benefit from intellectual property when the economy is down? How can patents and other forms of intellectual property be obtained in a cost effective manner when budgets are tight? In this presentation, an experienced patent attorney shares insights into cost effective IP with guidance directed to managers, research leaders, inventors, and entrepreneurs.
Biographical information:
David Sorensen
Mr. Sorensen has over 35 years of experience in a wide variety of technical and managerial assignments requiring comprehensive knowledge in several disciplines relating to engineering, manufacturing, information technology and business systems. He has been directly responsible for major contracts with industry and government agencies and has a proven record of technical competence, customer relations, and business planning in rapidly expanding technical companies. Mr. Sorensen has held increasingly responsible positions in product and service organizations. He is innovative, resourceful, and aggressive in accomplishing assigned responsibilities with major strengths in strategic planning, marketing and management. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering Science and a Masters in Manufacturing Engineering Technology from Brigham Young University.
Since 1995 he’s been the Director of the Utah Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP-Utah), serving primarily the 6,200 manufacturers in the state of Utah. MEP-Utah was selected to initiate and manage the NIST Information Technology Network for over 60 MEP Centers nationwide. Mr. Sorensen is also a BYU adjunct faculty member and the Associate Dean of Technology, Trades and Industry at Utah Valley State College. With a staff of 18, in one year MEP-Utah helped create or save 2,719 jobs in Utah, increased manufacturing sales by more than $121 million and increased employee payroll by more than $84 million.
He’s been the Chairman & CEO for Echo Solutions, a start-up software products and services company; Executive VP of Eyring Research Institute; General Manager of EG&G Services; Director of Engineering at EG&G Idaho Inc.; Manager of Architect Engineering and Construction at Aerojet Nuclear Company and Manager of Power Generation Equipment at Bunker Ramo. He also has experience with GE’s Nuclear Instrumentation as a Senior Applications Engineer, and in engineering positions at Kennecott Copper, Intermountain Industries, and F.C. Torkelson Engineers.
Michael Alder
Mike is Director of Technology Transfer at Brigham Young University, where his work has been nationally recognized by BusinessWeek and others for their success. Mike is also Chair of the Board for WestCAMP Inc. where he has also chaired the National Centers of Excellence (NCOE), a division of WestCAMP. Mike is formerly the CEO of the Biotechnology Association of Alabama. He was also a Venture Partner with Redmont Venture Partners, Inc. He has been heavily involved in the founding of Tranzyme, Inc.; Vaxin, Inc.; Folia, Inc.; Chlorogen, Inc.; Allvivo, Inc. and Cr3, Inc. All but one of these are biotechnology companies (Folia produces specialty biopolymers).
Mr. Alder has 30 years of experience in leading technology-based startup companies. He was previously CEO of Emerging Technology Partners in Birmingham, Alabama from 1997 to 2003. Prior to coming to Alabama in 1994 he co-founded the Grow Utah Fund that focused on creating technology-based businesses. In 1989 he was asked by the Utah Governor to head the State’s Office of Technology Development, which he did for 5 years as its Executive Director, helping bring Utah’s Centers of Excellence programs to national prominence. In 1973 he founded NPI, a plant biotechnology company in Salt Lake City, Utah and served as President, COO and Vice Chairman of that company for 15 years as it grew to over 700 employees.
Ken Horton
Ken Horton is a member of Kirton & McConkie‘s Intellectual Property Practice Section in Salt Lake City. His practice includes domestic and foreign patent prosecution, patent opinions, intellectual property litigation (including both state and federal court actions), domestic and foreign trademark prosecution, trademark opinions, copyrights, trade secrets, intellectual property evaluations and due diligence, as well as technology and intellectual property agreements. Mr. Horton has extensive experience in both pharmaceutical and semiconductor technologies. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of intellectual property law and strategy, speaking both at the 2007 and 2010 A.I.C.H.E. annual conferences and the 2009 A.C.S. annual conference. Additionally, Mr. Horton is an Associate Professor in these topics in the MBA Technology Management Program at the Gore School of Business of Westminster College.
Jonathan Lee
Jonathan Lee is a registered patent attorney and a member of the Utah State Bar practicing at ALG (AdvantEdge Law Group). His practice focuses on adding real-world value to companies, both large and small, by acquiring, securing, and protecting intellectual property rights.
Mr. Lee has prepared and successfully prosecuted hundreds of patent applications throughout his career, primarily in the electrical, electro-mechanical, and computer engineering fields. He currently helps a number of Fortune 1000 companies manage and develop their domestic and worldwide patent portfolios. He also regularly counsels clients in other aspects of intellectual property law, including litigation, licensing, and opinion work, as well as due diligence examinations, copyrights and trademarks, and patent reexamination proceedings.
Prior to joining ALG, Mr. Lee worked for nationally recognized law firms in Washington, D.C. and Salt Lake City, Utah.
Mr. Lee was recently selected as a Mountain States Rising Star by Super Lawyers, a peer-reviewed publication.
In May 2010 I was invited to speak at a conference of WTA (the Wisconsin Telecommunications Association) about innovation lessons for the telecommunications industry from our recently published book, Conquering Innovation Fatigue (John Wiley & Sons, 2009). Here is a condensed version of the presentation. I’ll do another Pixetell soon with some additional content.
Can’t help mentioning this: I had a technical problem with the above Pixetell and sent an email to their tech support team. I had a response within minutes. In fact, I had a phone call – the kind that takes real people using real time – and the quickly helped me troubleshoot the problem and get this post working. Wow! Miracles still happen–or at least great customer service. Love Pixetell. Great way to turn PowerPoints or whatever you have on a computer plus your voice into a recorded presentation that you can share with a URL, embed into a blog, or save as a movie. Pixetell is a product of Ontier, Inc.
Today I’m pleased to share a guest column from a friend, Brian Argo of Brian Argo & Associates LLC. Brian specializes in technical scouting, intellectual property searches, and formulation of cleaners and personal care products. He has a wide variety of experience in innovation and offers an interesting perspective that I thought would be useful for readers of Conquering Innovation Fatigue and this blog. –Jeff Lindsay
Brian Argo
Our idea was simply to form a microscopic mold as a template, fill it with metal, and remove part of the template leaving individual metal hairs surrounded by an insulator. Then, we could use any number of methods to coat the hairs and form solar cells. At the end of the day, its not too far technically removed from fabricating a micro scale Popsicle using a semiconductor foundry.
When our technical work started in earnest, we thought we might have been a bit deluded to think we scooped the big boys of the world (GE, BP, Sharpe). Off to my basement I went. I worked through the physics. I looked through hundreds of journal articles. I read through over 3000 patent abstracts. All the while, simply using Google, the US PTO, and the WIPO search engines. While I prefer using search engines like Aureka, it really isn’t to bad doing a search manually either. As long as you are short on money and don’t mind working like a mad man, it’s not a problem. I was worried that I must have missed something so I double-checked my search against an IP search using artificial intelligence. No significant prior art came up.
It become evident that geometry of the nano scale hairs was perfect to create a super solar cell. The solar cells are probably coated with what are referred to as nano dots or at least coatings so thin that phenomena that cause electrical losses due to excessive thickness disappeared. The cells are also super light absorbent and conserve rare materials. This was not lost on the theoreticians. However, their further belief was that semiconductor equipment is cost prohibitive for the use in solar cells, which is correct for machines found in state-of-the-art foundries. What they missed was that older, more primitive equipment was sufficient to make the nano-wire solar cell cost effectively. General George Patton once said, “If we’re all thinking the same thing, someone isn’t thinking.” In retrospect, groupthink in the solar industry left us a brief crack of time, which we used to patent and develop the technology. In the years that followed, we learned a lot of work had started a short time after ours.
The intellectual property needed to be done flawlessly. In my mind, that meant that I should draft the applications myself. However, the group voted to go with a big name national legal firm. Since we were bootstrapping the enterprise, we were starting with a provisional patent application. To save on legal fees, I drafted the application. Next, I spent the two weeks bringing an entry-level patent attorney up to speed on our technology, and then she let us know that the application was excellent and she supported filing it. No added claims. No significant improvements to the specification. Only a big “atta boy” and an invoice for $15,000. I think that when you work with a large legal firm and you are a fledgling startup, it is very unlikely that you will get the “A” level support. In the end, I suppose I did what I set out to do; we were just poorer for the experience. My only other qualm with our process is that our team viewed IP development as an ancillary activity. Some people just don’t get the value of IP until it is too late. Eventually excellent counsel was located through a recommendation of a former colleague, and the final application was done well.
Now all we needed was money. We chose two avenues, grants for academic research and angel money. Neither path is easy, but we managed to get several grants. The grants were nice to keep members of the team solvent, but they can also be a trap where too much focus is on writing papers. We found this to be the case, and eventually refocused fund raising on angel investors. That is not easy either. To get angel money, you need to have a good idea, and you need to have someone they know on your team. People who are trusted by angel investors or venture capitalists are not necessarily people that can be trusted. I cannot over emphasize how difficult it is to find a good person that meets that criterion. Mark Twain once said “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.” You cannot do too much background work. Fund raising last year was not fun. A Nobel Prize winner, a Stanford electrical engineer who graduated top his class in two and a half years, and few dozen other technical leaders, vetted us out. It was our experience that the complexity of the idea got lukewarm responses or ridicule from VC’s with little technical depth, but fantastic responses from investors with high levels of technical skill.
As grants and angel money trickled in, I frantically yet frugally raced to develop a prototype always working to stay one step ahead of the money. One problem was that there was no other technical support. Another problem was that manually performing operations that are normally automated around the clock is challenging. After many months of grueling work, it was gratifying to find that everything worked as I thought it would. Finally, individual investors gave us the money we needed to enter into long-term process development. The project has been moving forward according to plan. However, my personal and business priorities were not a match with the new management of the company, and the company no longer employs me. I am back in the consumer products business enjoying a brisk consulting business. This type of venture is not for anyone with a weak stomach for long hours, high risk, or high stress. However, if you are willing to pay the price and can work with trustworthy people, it can be the most satisfying and financially rewarding adventure in your career.