ZPEnergy.com - Evangelizing for Invention

From: TechnologyReview.com
Emerging Technology Conference Special Report
Former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold laments that companies and even academics devote so little to the direct pursuit of invention.
By Eric Hellweg (September 25, 2003)

Myhrvold recounted how conventional wisdom during the 1970s and 1980s held that there was no money to be made in the software business—that software had value as a product only when it was bundled with something more “real”—that is, hardware. Today’s conventional wisdom, he said, applies that same erroneous principle to invention: invention is valuable, the thinking goes, but only when it is bundled with real products.

“Invention is the next software,” Myhrvold said, referring to software’s ability to spur exponential growth and value increases. “Invention is the most important thing you can talk about when you discuss technology, and it’s usually neglected.”
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Myhrvold lamented the shift in attitudes and mission for the major corporate research houses, noting that stalwarts such as Lucent Technologies’ Bell Labs and IBM’s Watson Research have moved from a more a more blue sky approach to one focused on short-term gains with an impact on existing products. “These research houses are shadows of their former selves,” Myhrvold asserted. “In these big companies, you don’t invent. Most engineers are paid not to invent,” he said. “You’re mostly [working with] products. If you asked research managers if they could make a competitive, decent product without inventing anything new, would they do it, the answer would be ‘Hallelujah brother!’”

Academia has also seen a decline in inventive activity, according to Myhrvold. “You can be a tenured professor at MIT these days without having invented anything,”’ he said.
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To combat the decline in invention prominence, Myhrvold spoke of the invention incubator he runs called The Invention Factory. This operation has been in ramp-up mode for some time now (see “Myhrvold's Exponential Economy”), but it appears as though it’s finally getting off the ground: A visit to the jobs page on Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures site finds job postings to run the various inventor divisions dated September 22, 2003.....