DOW-UAP-D134, AAWSAP DIRD, Maverick Inventor Versus Corporate Inventor: Where Will the Next Major Innovations Arise, March 2010

This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD compares lone “maverick” inventors with researchers working inside larger organizations in order to ask where major future breakthroughs are most likely to come from, especially in unconventional energy and propulsion. It concludes that the strongest candidates are technically trained, relatively independent, and flexible researchers working with some freedom from institutional constraint. Because that preferred profile closely resembles the kind of researcher who appears to have authored or shaped much of the broader AAWSAP DIRD effort, the document reflects a notable methodological circularity, validating the program’s operational model rather than neutrally assessing the innovation ecosystem.

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Defense
Intelligence
Reference
Document
Acquisition Threat Support
30 Marc'h 2010
ICOD: 1 December 2009
DIA-08-1003-017
Maverick Inventor Versus
Corporate Inventor: Where
Will the Next Major
Innovations Arise?
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Maverick Inventor Versus Corporate Inventor: Where Will
the Next Major Innovations Arise?
Prepared by:
Acquisition Support Division ( DW0-3)
Defense Warning Office
Directorate for Analvsis
Defense Intelligence Agency
Author:
AAP Person 75
Administrative Note
COPYRIGHT WARNING: Further dissemination of the photographs in this publication is not authorized.
This product is one in a series of advanced technology reports produced in FY 2009
under the Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Warning Office's Advanced Aerospace
Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program. Comments or questions pertaining to
l
this document should be addressed to!AAP Person 1 AAWSA Program
Manager, Defense Intelligence Agency, ATTN: CLAR/DWO-3, Bldg 6000, Washington,
DC 20340-5100.
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Contents
Introduction ...........................................................................................................iv
Maverick Inventor.................................................................................................. 1
Corporate Inventor ................................................................................................ 2
Technologies .......................................................................................................... 4
The Type 1 Inventor............................................................................................... 6
The Type 2 Inventor............................................................................................... 7
The Type 3 Inventor................................................................................................. 8
The Type 4 Inventor............................................................................................. 10
The Type 5 Inventor............................................................................................. 10
Comparisons ........................................................................................................ 11
Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 12
Tables
Table 1. Types and Examples of Think Tanks.......................................................... 3
Table 2. Essential Elements That Characterize the Types of Inventor .................. 11
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Maverick Inventor Versus Corporate Inventor: Where Will
the Next Major Innovations Arise?
Introduction
Technological innovation has been advanced by several sectors of human
society and via a diverse set of circumstances. In the early 20th century, the
solitary maverick inventor was responsible for the bedrock of most of today's
industrial and commercial enterprises. As these enterprises grew larger, they
could afford their own research and development departments, tasking them
with developing products and processes aimed at increasing the market share
of the parent company. 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. Such
management became stultifying for many inventors wishing to produce true
innovation, and these mavericks shunned the commercial research agencies
and went off to carry out their own brand of research.
Another institution where true innovation is fostered is the university.
University research as it exists today started in Europe only in the 18th
century. The bulk of the discoveries in science leading to technological
innovation came from university research laboratories in the 19th and early
20th centuries. Currently there is considerable controversy surrounding the
degree to which research at universities is free from external influences,
whether from within the university, from the greater scientific community, or
from public and/or private agencies that fund the research. 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.
Human aggression and human needs gave birth to two additional areas of
innovation. As governments became embroiled in conflicts, they found the
need to fund "think tanks" for the purposes of stimulating scientific
developments that could aid war efforts. As well, the needs of their
constituents for food, shelter, health care, energy, economic development,
space exploration, and so forth demanded the establishment of government­
funded agencies to perform research and produce policy. To be effective,
military planners needed access to the most innovative technologies in all
areas of endeavor, not just armaments, and so established their own research
and development departments.
Circumstances determine the temporal requirement for innovation. Modern
versions of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse {wars, pestilence, lies,
famine/death: read conflict, environment, economy, health) pretty well sum
up the major stimulants that foster innovation. Fortunately, human society-at
least so far-has shown a remarkable propensity for inventing methods of
overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
This paper concentrates on two areas of technological innovation where
solutions have been particularly hard to come by-namely energy and
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propulsion, in particular aerospace and space propulsion. It is now the case
that new and exotic materials and their dimensions are driving the quality and
quantity of energy and propulsion innovations and preventing the average
inventor from contributing new and useful forms and assemblies. 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. These are the major reasons for the shift in focus from the lone
maverick inventor to the "corporate inventor," the latter being a part of a
large organization.
This paper compares the roles of the maverick inventor who is less
constrained by the strictures of a large organization with those of the
corporate inventor and provides some insight into where to expect required
future innovations in the areas of energy and propulsion.
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Maverick Inventor
Most of the easy combinations of components and materials have been investigated
repeatedly since the time of Michael Faraday. However, it is still to this "low-hanging
fruit" that the average maverick inventor is drawn for inspiration. For example, in the
area of energy innovation, it is still attractive to many inventors to try various
combinations of permanent magnets and wire to try to improve the efficiency of
modern electrical machinery, or better yet, claim to extract possibly limitless energy
from these magnets. 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.
There is also the role of the media, most important the Internet, in continuing to
stimulate the creativity of the maverick inventor. Movies continue to depict the lone
genius saving the planet via some invention, be it a physical weapon or a piece of
computer code. This no doubt propels succeeding generations to believe that they may
one day single-handedly develop a new free-energy or antigravity device and save the
planet. Unfortunately, the Internet has fostered the belief that new inventions,
especially in the areas of energy generation and gravity control, are relatively
straightforward- one simply needs the correct comb,ination of macroscopic components.
One of the disadvantages of the access to apparent technological innovation that the
Internet provides is to foster and maintain intellectual and experimental laziness. This
manifests itself in many ways, principally in that the prospective inventor increasingly
believes that simply spending a few minutes on the Internet can give him all the
background information about who has done what in a particular field of invention.
Indeed, the would-be inventor does not even need to leave his chair and physically
investigate the situation himself. A corollary concern is the lack of information on prior
attempts that is available to maverick inventors. Whereas the corporate inventor has
immediate access to a broad range of technical resources, including patents and
scientific and technical publications, the cost of these resources and their publicly
accessible concentration in university libraries drive the average maverick inventor to
rely solely on the Internet. Fortunately there are now positive signs that at least as far
as "free energy" and antigravity are concerned, there are Internet sites trying to be
repositories for failed inventions in these areas (Reference 1, 2).
Another major problem is the decreasing reliance on a sound technical education, either
in the sciences or in engineering. Why bother enduring 4 years of an extremely difficult
undergraduate program when all the answers are right there on the computer screen. It
is the age of instant, albeit self-proclaimed, geniuses. No need to bother with correct
measurement procedures or proper control experiments when you can publish the
results of your studies on YouTube without bothersome peer review.
So how might one characterize the maverick inventor? Useful categories of maverick
inventors (assumed to be in the context of the late 20th and early 21st centuries)
might include the following types:
• Individual with no formal training and little money.
• Individual with no formal training and some money.
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• Individual with formal training and little money.
• Individual with formal training and some money.
• Small group (usually two or three) of knowledgeable inventors with money.
"Formal training" is assumed to be in the specific scientific or engineering discipline in
which the invention would naturally be situated. Of course, in the last entry in the
above list, the maverick inventor begins to look more like the "corporate inventor," but
the idea should be clear.
Although this paper does not dwell on the personality of the maverick inventor, it is
useful to remind ourselves that the maverick inventor is by definition a loner both in
social and scientific/technical areas. In an online article (Reference 3), maverick
inventor Dean Kamen1 writes: "It's not that they're brilliant or well-educated ... They
work all the time. They don't let failure demoralize or destroy them. They pick
themselves up and keep going and eventually, every once in a while, one of your ideas
actually breaks through and works, and it makes all that stuff seem worthwhile."
Kamen's article goes on to state: "Stubborn, delusionally optimistic, creative, fearless,
flexible and focused are some of the ways psychologists and business people describe
the personality of the maverick ...' You need to be in denial or in ignorance about the
huge challenges you face,' laughs Guy Kawasaki, a former Apple executive and
entrepreneur who's starting the self-described "magazine rack" alltop.com. 'You have to
believe that it wouldn't be hard for you to succeed."'
Corporate Inventor
The corporate inventor is a part of and relies on a large organization, conveniently
labeled a think tank, to both stimulate and sustain him. 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." Usually, sufficient cash and equipment are
on hand, especially when the desired innovation is being funded externally. These think
tanks may be government, military, academic, corporate, or private. The closest model
to the freedom associated with the maverick inventor is usually found in a university
setting, although a number of privately sponsored institutions exist (for example,
Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada). At least until recently, academic institutions
prided themselves in the freedom granted to their research scientists and engineers.
Table 1 provides examples of the various types of think tanks.
' Dean Kamen Is an experienced Inventor In the medical field, where his Inventions Include the AutoSyrlnge. Among
his many other inventions are devices using the Stirling cycle for energy generation and water purification and the
Segway Personal Transporter.
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Table 1. Types and Examples of Think Tanks
Type Examples
Universities Radlab, MIT, Cambridge, MA
Government Sandia National Laboratories,
Albuquerque, NM
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
Livermore, CA
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton,
NY
NASA (for example, Glenn Research
Center, Brook Park, OH)
Quasi-Government/Military DARPA, Arlinqton, VA
Corporate GM Research Laboratory, Warren, MI
Alcatel/Lucent - Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ
Skunk Works, Palmdale, CA
Privately Funded Perimeter Institute for Theoretica I Physics,
Waterloo, Canada
Institute for Advanced Studies, Austin , TX
SARA (Scientific Applications & Research
Associates) Cypress, CA
Independent, Nonprofit Battelle, Columbus, OH
SRI International, Menlo Park, CA
EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute),
Palo Alto, CA
Austrian Research Centers, Sei bersdorf,
Austria
These entities typically arose in response to a particular need or crisis. Perhaps the
most famous and effective think tank was the vast agency known as the Manhattan
District. Less well known to the public was, for example, the RadLab at MIT.
Except in the case of privately funded organizations, they all support many hundreds to
thousands of researchers, of which a variable proportion could be termed "inventors."
Even the smaller entities support a dozen or so highly motivated scientists and
engineers easily classified as inventors.
A benefit of being an inventor in a large organization is access to information. The
corporate inventor can quickly determine whether a certain avenue of approach has
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already been tried, using resources not generally available to the maverick inventor,
such as patent searches, scientific and technical documents, or an in-house library.
Another benefit is access to the latest technical apparatus, p