DOW-UAP-D134 — Maverick vs. Corporate Inventors

The report argues that large industrial research organizations increasingly managed improvements to existing technology rather than fostering fundamental innovation.

Generally speaking, as time went on these types of enterprises became less hotbeds of true innovation than places where improvements to the current technologies were tightly managed.

The report says universities increasingly rely on outside funders that may influence which research they support.

As university salaries and expenses go up, there is increasing reliance on external funding sources, the majority of which wish to exert some influence over the type of research they are underwriting.

For advanced energy and propulsion, the report says capital and materials requirements place frontier experimentation beyond most lone inventors.

The capital outlay required to probe the limits of current high technology in search of a new breakthrough is also beyond the means of the vast majority of lone inventors.

The report criticizes many independent energy inventors for revisiting magnet-based concepts without accounting for conservation laws or earlier failures.

The average energy inventor is not bothered by pesky Laws of Energy Conservation or that the devices he is spending endless time on have been investigated hundreds of times before.

The report defines corporate inventors as members of organizations where collaboration can stimulate ideas and identify dead ends.

There is constant interaction between like-minded innovators that serves both as a stimulus to explore new areas and as a much-needed "dead-end detector."

The report identifies information access, modern equipment, prototyping and machining support as major advantages of organizational research.

Another benefit is access to the latest technical apparatus, prototyping, and machining capabilities.

The report notes that small corporate blue-sky teams may explore unusual subjects, but their work normally remains within the funder’s mission.

However, in general, their tasks still fall within the general purview of the entity funding them.

The report credits Tesla, Tsiolkovsky and Goddard as formative maverick innovators while judging most current energy and propulsion advances to be organizational and incremental.

The current innovations in these two fields come from larger organizations such as those highlighted in the previous section.

The report says Type 1 inventors often neglect experimental design, error analysis and power measurement while constructing prototypes.

Delving into thermodynamics, proper experiment design, error analysis, or even power factor is usually seen as taking valuable time away from construction of an invention prototype.

The report says independent low-power validation is commonly skipped before Type 1 inventors seek money for larger prototypes.

Note the key step of independently verifying the technical validity of the device at low power is to be avoided

The report concludes that Type 1 inventors have a negligible chance of major energy or propulsion innovation because of weak training, measurement practice and laboratory discipline.

Given their lack of formal education in the relevant disciplines, there is a negligible chance that Type 1 inventors will contribute anything of significance to major innovations in the energy and propulsion areas.

The report warns that Type 2 inventors can use greater financial resources and professional presentation to attract capital to unproductive concepts.

On the one hand, these inventors can be much more dangerous than Type 1 inventors, as they can use their enhanced financial clout to make it appear as if they have something of value

The report describes Type 3 inventors as beginning with a hypothesis or model and then advancing through staged basic experiments.

As the inventor gains more formal training, the foundation for the innovations tends to be a hypothesis or mathematical model leading to basic experiments

The report says Type 3 inventors usually publish peer-reviewed work but may still misread measurements or become dogmatic after supportive early results.

Type 3 inventors generally have a record of publications in peer-reviewed literature. However, even with a greater degree of education, it is ohen the case that the inventor makes mistakes in measurement or interpretations of data

The report describes Type 4 inventors as experienced, independently funded developers who favor stepwise improvements over fundamental energy or gravity breakthroughs.

Type 4 inventors realize the necessity of a step-by-step approach and the pitfalls of developing ideas from scratch.

The report says Type 5 inventor groups are oriented toward near-term commercial work and are less motivated to pursue exotic projects with long horizons and low success odds.

These innovators have a high degree of motivation for near-term commercial projects but less motivation for exotic long-term projects

Citing Marc G. Millis, the report frames the preferred breakthrough researcher as a published, credible risk-taker with vision rather than an uncritical enthusiast.

Millis considers the same scenario (Reference 32) when he states that the innovators he seeks are published, credible risk-takers with vision.

The report ranks technically trained Type 3 and 4 mavericks as its best independent prospects for innovation and recommends monitoring and encouraging them.

Types 3 and 4 appear to be the best choice regarding where to expect the next innovations to arise and should be carefully selected based on criteria similar perhaps to those used above.

The report concludes that a motivated corporate or university inventor with sufficient flexibility could rival its preferred Type 3 and 4 mavericks.

If the corporate inventor, and especially the university-based inventor, could be motivated and granted sufficient flexibility, he would be an excellent candidate