Discussion on:

Our times: more nano-innovation, less 'big innovation'

Joe,

I enjoyed the article. Thanks for the plug!

Greg (@digitaltonto)

The US became a technology giant because of the individual innovators who were loners and who made path breaking inventions which contributed to the wealth that the US has which in turn created mega corporations who encouraged corporate style research teams as a result individual innovators who usually come up revolutionary ideas got side tracked because they could not work in teams or could not blow their own trumpet. Most often they could not get finance.

Many individual innovators because they were loners were cheated by powerful financers who ran mega corporations who made lots of money from the stolen ideas. The inventions emanating from the research teams of corporations were more for making money rather than meeting a human need.

All path breaking inventions came from individual inventors and all these inventions were human need based and so were revolutionary. The individual inventors are discouraged firstly because of no finance and secondly the ideas are stolen. Patenting is expensive and time consuming and this makes the patent attorney rich leaving the inventor poor.

This is obvious in the area of mobility & transit. The inventions produced by the corporate research teams are a better version of the same old idea. The new inventions are around cars which are smaller, cheaper, more mileage, better paint, better upholstery, GPS guided, electric, hybrid, none of which solve the problem of congestion, fuel prices, pollution in a quantum leap.

Mobility & Transit is a problem facing the entire world. A revolutionary invention is need in this segment and this can come from individual inventors and not from research teams which are CONTROLLED by corporate boardrooms OR a panel of professors in universities OR a committee of uncommitted bureaucrats in government.

Their were not such powerful economic interests blocking the mass adoption of those new technologies in the early 20th century - no giant horse-breeding companies or multinational buggy building corporations. The huge technological advances of that era spawned the most profitable businesses that the world has ever seen, with power that rivals or exceeds that of governments. These corporations strenuously resist the replacement of the technologies they are built on by the next big thing. This is a major reason why innovation has had limited impact on many areas of our lives.

As for flying cars - an air traffic control nightmare. It's human pilots that are holding that back, it will only work when computers take over the flying completely.

The companies there were starting up in the early 20th century had to pay very little in the way of taxes, unlike companies starting out today whose first 1/3 of profit goes for income tax. Similarly for regulations -- there were virtually none a hundred years ago. Thus older companies were able to grow large without those burdens and new companies today face not only those burdens but entrenched competitors as well -- they have to beat out the best of the best, not just others that are just starting out.

...don't forget the patent trolling!