The lead article about Thomas Edison in the July 5^th issue of Time lays out the importance of the seeds very nicely.  (Why does the 5 July issue appear in my mailbox on 26 June?  What's with that?)  Nothing happens without the seeds; no seed, no innovation, no societal benefit.  This guy Edison was the ultimate creator of seeds.  As a teenager I toured his museum/lab in Menlo Park, America's first industrial R&D facility, and I was blown away.  That tour probably contributed significantly to my decision to pursue an engineering education.  But I digress.

     I think we all tend to forget the critical importance of this component of innovation.  In my view, a society just needs to (1) adequately educate its people in a certain way to cultivate the required ingenuity, (2) provide suitably qualified people with a decent place to work and the tools to perform that work, (3) motivate those people with money (but not too much) and employment security (but not too much), (4) leave them alone, and (5) be patient (within reason).  I've seen this work in the corporate world, and I think it works in academia too.  By the way, the financial return on this investment - as measured by the original investor - is rather poor.  That is certainly an impediment.

     The Time article does sound the alarm about the recent degradation of American innovation generally.  Evidence is presented by way of our reduced federal share of GDP spent on R&D overall, our reduced share of bachelor's degrees awarded in science and engineering, and our lagging federal spending on energy R&D in particular.  (I also believe that we have been socially devaluing our technologists in favor of our talking heads and celebrities - but don't get me started!)  These are all troubling trends, which need to be reversed.

     Next comes the processes by which seeds get sown, inventions get commercialized, and benefits get bestowed upon the masses.  This is the subject of countless articles, theories, academic treatises, and business-school case studies.  And, of course, there have been equally countless success stories in which innovative (and not so innovative) products and services have been fully developed and commercialized for public and private profit.  (These processes are where Trilogy Associates has focused its talents for more than 20 years.)

     One example, among many, of such a process paradigm (sorry, but the word fits) is the notion of Open Innovation, which was originated by Henry Chesbrough of U.C. Berkeley in a 2003 book with that title.  It's basically the concept defined as "how a company works with partners, agencies and other companies outside its own organization to foster innovation" through a range of partnering, licensing and joint-venture activities.  Paul Barrett of PA Consulting Group recently published an article dealing with their recent survey to gauge the status of Open Innovation within 30 global companies.  In general, most companies agree that Open Innovation is key to the future success of the business, but relatively few have so far adopted a structured or company-wide approach to it.

     I think we can all agree that it is rare indeed for an inventor - individual or corporate - to have the wherewithal to fully commercialize its technology using only internal resources.  Other organizations typically must play some role, often a leading role, in the process.  For this reason it is very important that all the parties to such an arrangement devise their own representative measures of the value of the technology in question.  Ideally, these various measures will coalesce to a uniform value, at least at the conclusion of negotiations if not initially.  In the simplest case a technology buyer and a technology seller must each conduct their own assessment and eventually come to an agreed-upon economic value.  I've published a qualitative, guiding checklist for this purpose; check it out.

     I've recently come across two examples of ingenious product concepts that I believe could find widespread use and convey great user benefit if/when they are fully commercialized.  To paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, "ingenious" may be hard to define, but I know it when I see it.

     Researchers at MIT have developed a method of using a basic cell phone coupled with a cheap and simple plastic device clipped onto the screen to estimate refractive errors and focal range of eyes.  As a result rudimentary, and perhaps fully adequate, vision exams could become available to anyone with a cell phone.  Check out the article describing this idea and especially the included video to better understand the principle.  Do you think this just might negatively impact the array of services offered by optometrists?