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."

Comments

There are two parts to the problem

[catsidhe]

First you must have an idea. This is almost always the result of one person having a brainwave.

Second you must have the manufacture/ marketing/ sales etc. This is the bailiwick of larger corporations.

This has always been the way. Edison made such an impact because with his first small successes he built a corporation which could produce and market other more marginal products. Tesla, on the other hand, had some (literally) world-shattering ideas, but as he didn't have a large corporation of his own, he had to go cap-in-hand to people like Westinghouse and Morgan to get the funding to develop his ideas. (Yes, Tesla did start several companies to develop specific concepts, but they were all small, specific and all failed for one reason or another. If Tesla had had all the resources of Westinghouse at his command, rather than at petition, who knows what toys we would have now?)

This is not to say that Edison was a better inventor than Tesla (many would argue that Tesla left him in the dust as far as raw imagination and engineering skills went), but Edison had the marketing skills and business sense which enabled him to do more with what he had.

You will, I think, find this pattern in all revolutionary inventions over the last two-hundred years. The inventor was

1. working on his own, and used his great idea to build a company around it, (Edison Electric Lights)
2. working on his own, and made a deal with an existing company to produce and market it (Tesla, Westinghouse and AC generators), or
3. working as part of a corporation already, and already had the resources available to do something with the idea (Transistors at Bell Labs, just about anything from PARC, etc.)

You will probably find that the discoverer of the Blue Laser Diode was working with a corporation, and could make a deal with that corporation to produce the diodes. He could not have done it on his own. Similarly with the Clockwork Radio, IIRC the inventor used funds from the UN to start a company to produce these radios.

Re:yea right..

[bentini]

As far as I can tell, these people have, respectively "invented" Linux, Perl and Vim, which are respectively marginal improvements (in certain senses) of UNIX, AWK, and ed/sed. They all at least have various philosophical similarities to what I have described as their predecessors.

These three inventions were all made by Bell Labs. Bell Labs was supported only by the telephone monopoly, aka the biggest corporation in the world. I'd say that that is a far cry from a "lone inventor." What it once took a genius years to do, it eventually takes anyone no time at all. You understand the laws of motion (probably) and gravity, which is more than can be said of anyone living in the 12th Century. You can create new applications of those problems, but that doesn't make you the inventor of them. Even if you recast them and re-write them.

The lonely inventor sometimes has an edge

[NewtonsLaw]

As someone who qualifies as a "lonely inventor" (see my latest invention) I can say with some authority that there are occasionally some definite advantages to working outside the huge corporate structure.

For a start, many of those working within the corporate machine have obtained their position as a result of a splended array of formal qualifications and their academic background.

Now, while such a background is extremely important, there are occasions when it actually makes the act of "inventing" an awful lot harder.

Some of the most interesting (and practical) inventions are the result of someone who didn't know (because they hadn't been taught) that something was impossible -- so they just went ahead and did it.

An unfortunate effect of gaining a depth of knowledge is that one's field of vision is often reduced as a result. Sometimes an important innovation comes as a result of applying knowledge gained in a totally different field to a problem.

It's been my experience that occasionally the "experts" get so close to the problem that they can't easily see the bigger picture -- a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees so to speak.

Of course the reality is that if "the lone inventor" does have a good idea, they're then left with no choice but to solicit the help of a large corporation and the resources that such an organization can bring to bear. There's usually a huge void between an idea or a working prototype, and a commercially successful product.

The inventor and his invention are just one piece of the puzzle.

Of course (as I well know), the biggest problem faced by many inventors, regardless of the quality or viability of their ideas, is getting the right "big corporation" interested enough to provide those missing pieces.

I shudder to think about just how many great ideas have never seen the light of day -- not because the inventor couldn't invent, but because (s)he simply had no luck in attracting corporate or investment interest.

Of course anyone wanting to invest in my X-Jet engine is welcome to contact me :-)