A grand old movie is “The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell” starring Gary Cooper as the aviation innovator Billy Mitchell. Billy Mitchell has a major airport named after him in Milwaukee and there is a small museum honoring him in the airport. Today his name is honored as one of the great champions of innovation …
Punishing Innovation: Lessons from the Court Martial of Billy Mitchell Read More »
A surprisingly common problem in industry is that the technologies and systems that some large companies use are clearly not the “best” choices based on a variety of fairly objective standards. I’m not necessarily talking about difficult trade-offs where the “best” technology involves high cost and high risk, but am also considering cases where there …
As we’ve discussed previously on this blog, the West often gets things completely backwards when it comes to China, and the misunderstandings can be serious barriers to Asian innovators seeking global markets. The “Tragedy of Chopsticks” helps illustrate this. A few years ago while in the US, I became concerned about chopsticks in China. The …
The Tragedy of Chopsticks: Getting Things Straight in China Read More »
“This is something that is dangerous and clearly unsanitary,” warned New York senator Jeffrey Klein in October 2009. “Once we shed light on this dirty little process, more people will avoid it and we can ban it.” The terrifying menace that so worried the good state senator and led him to introduce legislation to ban …
Eaten Alive By Regulation: Innovation Fatigue and Fish Therapy Read More »
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 …
Patents: Sucking the Lifeblood from the Economy?? Read More »
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 »
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 …
The impact of innovation in China is often not obvious to the West, even when many gadgets like the iPhone draw upon innovations from China and Taiwan that make many Western products possible. Not many Chinese brands have spread outside the borders of China, leading some observers to question the significance of Chinese innovation in …
Many companies seeking innovation overlook their own internal barriers to innovation success. One of the biggest barriers can be their own attorneys. Lawyers are needed for many aspects of innovation, such as drafting the agreements with partners in open innovation and protecting IP with patents, trademarks, and other intellectual assets. The skill of a good …
Following up on the mind-numbing failure of Thompson-Reuters to include ANY Chinese or Taiwanese company on their list of the 100 Top Global Innovators, let me mention one more that should be there: Lenovo. This Chinese multinational company had 402 US patents granted from 2005 to 2010, well above the numbers obtained by some other …