The Myth of the Lone Inventor

Codex The Sloth writes "Malcolm Gladwell (who amongst other things, wrote "The Tipping Point") has written an article for the New Yorker claiming that the role of the lone inventor is over. The example of Philo T. Fransworth (the "inventor" of Television) who failed because (amongst other reasons) he didn't have the big resources of a company to allow him to focus on his innovations. The thesis is that it is rare to have a single innovation that makes a product workable and that getting all of the inovations together requires a (large) corporation. No doubt others feel different."

Human Knowledge Growth

[EricBoyd]

This is almost certainly true. The days where one human could contain enough of our knowledge in order to make a technologically *useful* advance in that knowledge, in a short period of time, are long over.

Sure, one guy might have an idea, but it would take him years to get all the peices together - just determining if it's gonna work or not! (let alone actually manufacturing it, etc.).

Now, there are places where a good idea can make a difference immediatly - the internet being one of them. But even there, getting people to look at it requires resources...

Websuring done right! StumbleUpon [stumbleupon.com]

The myth of the inventor of TV

[Anonymous Coward]

Farnsworth invented totally electrical TV , not TV. The article also incorrectly states that Baird et al did not get (partly) mechanical TV working when in fact they did, it's just that Farnsworth's system was vastly superior. Of course, it was American media, so they had to distort the truth in bias of Americans.

Re:But what about Dean Kamen?

[gad_zuki!]

That's PR and an advertising myth. Dean works for DEKA a corporation. He has also founded and sold his other corporations. He didn't piece the segway in his garage with his son on boring sunday afternoons or something. From their website:

Founded in 1982 by Dean Kamen, DEKA consisted of a relatively small group of individuals and lots of innovative ideas. Today, almost 200 engineers, technicians, and machinists work in our electronics and software engineering labs, machine shop, and on CAD stations. Our facilities have been designed to promote constant interaction between and within the engineering groups. Our on-site machine shop and molding facility are central to the success of our projects; ideas are prototyped and tested in record time.

Re:Ha

[hettb]

Big corporations don't invent anything, and the worst place in the world for an inventive, brilliant, highly intelligent and competent person (like an inventor) is a stultifying, closed-minded, skeptical, gray, dull bureaucracy (like a big corporation). Nothing will take the joy out of invention like having to appease a bunch of self-serving arrogant skeptics.

The days of the lone (or small group of) inventor(s) is just beginning. What about Linux, for example? Come on. This can't be serious.

Linux was not an invention, but the re-implementation of an operating system (Unix) which had been developed by people (Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, et al -- no lone inventor here either) working for a "big, gray, dull corporation" (Bell Labs/AT&T) more than 20 years before that.

Viable roles left for lone creators:

[RyanFenton]

1. DSP research and development. I've worked as the student programmer for a 2 person DSP programming company that was actually successful. The owner, an experienced electrical engineer, was an astounding businessman, programmer, and scientist, who invented and ported sound technology to DSPs, and worked with larger companies on a freelance basis to put those DSP's into larger inventions. All while working at home after years in larger businesses. There's plenty of work out there to make the gadgets of future decades possible - but you have to do a lot of inventing and marketing to make it feasible, and be absolutely sure about each step. If you can't honestly explain exactly what you are doing, in a provable manner, to potential customers, everyone will get very frustrated. Be prepared for lots of legal work too. And be prepared for some insane assembly languages for dozens of different parts - for each new part, the language, compiler, and basic philisophy of the unit seems to change. If anyone can develop consistant tools for many parts between companies, and convince people to start using them, they could make lots of money.

2. Biotech and DNA technology development. Much like #1, but much more massive ammounts of legal work involved. The main thing is that, as much as possible, don't get involved in the touchy intellectual property-oriented areas. Instead, develop the tools which will allow others to study, graph, track, etc, various pieces of Biotech information. The easier and more consistant you can make the process of collecting information and organizing the information for medical researchers, the more they can get done, and hopefully, the more they will use your tools. You'll need to consider the equipment used in various experiments, the nature of the appropriation systems put together for research organizations, and how best to market your product. You can make deals with equipment providers (as long as you're not outright purchased this way), and get job satisfaction out of helping people develop ways to save lives.

Well... those are the two big ones I can think up off the top of my head. Anyone else with some other relatively open branches of computer science or electrical engineering? Any other great unfilled but potentially profitable needs that haven't really been getting companies attention?

:^)

Ryan Fenton

Re:Ha

[the eric conspiracy]

Big corporations don't invent anything,

True enough. Inventions occur through individuals solving problems.

and the worst place in the world for an inventive, brilliant, highly intelligent and competent person (like an inventor) is a stultifying, closed-minded, skeptical, gray, dull bureaucracy (like a big corporation).... What about Linux, for example? Come on. This can't be serious.

Yes, what about Linux? Linux is a good example of why your argument is wrong. Linux is not an invention - in fact it is a copy of an invention that occurred in a very large company.

You are making a grave error if you think all large corporations are gray, dull bureaucracies. Many large corporations in fact supply wonderful environments that spawn incredible creativity and technological progress by their employees. AT&T, for example - Bell Labs (transistor, laser, Information Science, UNIX etc. is a classic example of a corporate environment that was successful in spawning innovation). Other companies have gone through periods where they have succesfully fostered great creativity - DuPont and it's development of synthtic fibers, Texas Instruments and IC's, and so on.

The fact is that good corporations realize that invention can be a great contributor to their growth, and some of them actually grow through that route.

Oh, and individuals often have families to raise, so that a steady wage while they are doing their inventing can look pretty good.

COMING SOON - How Americans invented the wheel

[The Famous Druid]

Um, not wanting to sound too internationalist here, but when will you septics break out of your parochial "we invented everything" state of mind?

The Berlin Olympics were televised - German Technology.
About the same time John Logie Baird (a Scot) was conducting test transmissions in the UK - British Technology.

Come on guys, there's a big wide world out there, open your eyes, you might find there's something outside the USA of interest.

Manjusri Effect: Collective Genius(was yea, right)

[Tony Laszlo, Tokyo]

This notion has existed in Japan (and perhaps other parts of Asia) for some time. I refer to it as the Manjusri Effect in an upcoming column here: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/shukan-st/articles/ . Fair warning: should be avoided by people who have no interest in the FIFA World Cup which will commence very soon. "Manjusri Effect" is taken from the proverb: "if three people put their heads together they will generate the wisdom of Manjusri" (the Buddhist deity of Omniscience). The related webpage noted in the article is here (under construction): http://www.issho.org/tl/ourmessages-fifa2002.html

Hydralic Rams

[pmc]

But then there is another story not many people remember about someone doing work on creating a pump mechanism that you place in a river. Using the kinetic force of the movement of the water to power a pump to take some of the water from the river and push it thorugh a hose up a hill. This was a device that was just submerged in the water without the need to dam the river.

I'm not surprised that not many people remember it. What you have described is a hydralic ram, which was invented by the Montgolfier brothers (of ballon fame) in 1793. See here [cat.org.uk] for the details.

BBC Baird Standard System

[Interrobang]

Well, the Baird Standard System actually was used in Britain, and people watched it, too. Here's [dircon.co.uk] a page on early television history (begins with Nipkow in 1884[!]) by one of the foremost television scholars around.

There's much more interesting stuff on this page, including a history of Phonovision [dircon.co.uk], Baird's attempt to record his television experiments;

and information on the earliest known recording of broadcast television [dircon.co.uk], which dates from 1933, incidentally somewhat earlier than the Berlin Olympics broadcast in '36...

Granted, we now use an electronic system for television, but where would we have been without the analogue version?

Interrobang, graverobbing dead media since 1996