A small start-up company fighting one of the great giants of all time: it’s a classic story of David vs. Goliath, or in this case, David vs. Googleliath (a.k.a. VSL vs. Google). Many small companies have claimed that Google misappropriated trade secrets or other IP, but rarely has Google graciously (and accidentally) cooperated in providing …
In a previous post here, I reported a huge loan to a Chinese paper company backed by its mostly Chinese IP as collateral. The 8 billion RMB obtained by China’s Tralin Paper (Quanlin Paper in Chinese, though they use www.tralin.com for their website), one of the biggest IP-backed loans in the world, not only shows …
Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly on Twitter) had a recent tweet about the Nobel Laureate Andre Geim who discovered graphene and many potential uses for the super strong two-dimensional material. His tweet was “Puts the lie to the claim that patents help small inventors: Why Geim Never Patented Graphene http://bit.ly/9QrEC3“. The link is to a discussion on …
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 …
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 …
In my ongoing work on analyzing the intellectual property landscape in biofuels, one of the most impressive companies I’ve run across is Amyris, a renewable products company whose clever use of synthetic biology goes far beyond biofuels. Amyris was founded by Kinkead Reiling, Neil Renninger, and Jack D. Newman who met at Berkeley and founded …
Amyris: Great Story of Open Innovation and Renewable Products Read More »
In late 2009, I was invited to speak at Singapore’s Innovation and Enterprise Week 2009, an event held at Biopolis and sponsored by A*STAR, the world-class research organization of the Singaporean government, in collaboration with Exploit Technologies, the tech transfer arm of A*STAR. While I enjoyed the opportunity to discuss our book, the important thing …
In recent years, scientists have been astounded to discover that the visible universe represents just a tiny fraction of the matter and energy that governs the cosmos. Based on the motion of stars and galaxies, strange “dark matter” must be present, increasing the gravitational tug on celestial bodies more than can be accounted for by …
Dark Energy and Dark Matter: What Astrophysics Can Teach Us about Innovation Success Read More »
One of the nine major innovation fatigue factors that we treat in Conquering Innovation Fatigue is theft of the invention, of the IP, or other assets. One of the most painful and most common sources of theft of an invention is from partners such as vendors or customers. One apparent example is the dispute between …