Open innovation?

What’s so open about Open Innovation? Big companies realised some time ago that maintaining a sizeable internal ‘Arrandee’ department was painfully expensive and usually not very productive when up against commercial deadlines.

Often, that issue was representative of a failure to understand that R and D are fundamentally different activities (Research is stumbling across new knowledge by repeatedly testing your ideas about how the world works -by watching how the world works. Development is making new products to a defined specification and within a fixed budget and timescale). Get this wrong and all your resources get expended on smart people playing limitless mind games. Even large corporations find it too costly to maintain patent portfolios arising from ideas which might become products ‘one day’.

Instead, they spotted that many of their best new product ideas were being suggested by outsiders, off the payroll. Acme Ltd’s usual policy is to say “send us nothing because we don’t want to be accused later, by some lone inventor, of having copied his idea…ie pretty much the same one we may have already been working on in-house”.

Avid customers however are persistent and, in the case of eg Lego’s robotics kits, they were actually improving the system by hacking its operating system. After 18 months or so of prosecuting their best customers for their temerity, the company realised that those people were a source of expertise and sheer creativity that you usually can’t get by waving a paycheck around.

Listening to customer ideas is the foundation of Open Innovation. Sounds a bit like Open Source, but it’s vastly different. It turns out of course that some companies are more open than others. Many choose to use online aggregators, such as Innocentive.com, to publicise problems they’d like to see dealt with. There aren’t that many people capable of suggesting new sulphurisation reactions for polycyclic aromatic morpho-heterachromes, or whatever…offering prizes online is a way to attract them.

Here’s the deal. You have to sign up to multiple pages of legal bumf before even getting access to the guts of the problem. It’s almost always a very narrowly defined one which is limited by the imagination of an already embarrassed head of Arrandee (see above). Then, you get a chance to write some detailed solution and send it to them. If they choose it as a winner you might get $20k. If they don’t, then you have shared your idea with some folk who have decided not to pay for the privilege. This may well hamper any of your subsequent attempts to obtain legal ‘protection’ for your solution.

P&G have managed to reduce their new product failures from 80% to 50% by this kind of process, so it clearly works -for them. As for the external Inventors, they may get some satisfaction and even recognition but it’s mostly free consulting in return for a small lottery ticket.

If you have a really good cure for a significant commercial headache, why not try talking direct to potential corporate licensees? (after having decided whether to invest in your own patent application). Contact me for some guidance about how to make this kind of approach. pra@break-step.com

#1948: ShowShelf

Today’s invention is a novel display mode for one’s e-reader.

Placed on its side on a shelf, the device would show the spines of the real books, digital contents of which were stored within it.

This display would periodically scroll, if you have many electronic titles on board, in order to show off what a well-read person you are.

#1947: StickySpray

Inkjet printers are remarkable devices, capable of laying down inks with extreme precision.

Today’s invention is to apply this to the creation of adhesive labels.

Imagine a printer which is creating a page of eg address labels. On the opposite side from the text, an extra print head sprays adhesive onto the paper.

The spray could generate a pattern which used just enough glue to effectively attach the labels. It could be made coloured, so that the sticky areas could be avoided when handling the paper.

(This would also allow envelopes to be made from a flat sheet of paper and then folded so that the pre-glued edges stuck together. Or, apply the glue to a roll of paper to make masking tape).

#1946: CoverGlove

Today’s invention is to allow the effective use of smartphones in ultra-cold weather.

A mitten has a transparent window made of thin plastic, so the screen is perfectly visible. Inside, there are straps which hold the device so that it stays approximately in place without having to be gripped.

Another zipped aperture allows the other hand to be placed inside the mitten to touch the screen.

#1945: StrikerLights

Defenders in football have to keep a close eye on the foot movements of attacking players. When attempting to tackle a deft centre-forward, they need to anticipate where the ball is going to go in the next few milliseconds.

Today’s invention is intended to make the job of such players, especially at the highest level, even more challenging.

The studs on boots would each be fitted with a small LED. These could be made to switch on and off in patterns -so as to create extra, subtle shadows and suggest movement in a direction opposite to that in which the player’s weight is actually shifting.

The patterns could be made to vary, perhaps randomly, so that predicting the next body-swerve would be harder (and resulting in more goals).

#1944: Launchboard

High-board diving is a fascinating sport, although watching it without slow-motion playback is pretty pointless.

Today’s invention seeks to extend the challenge and appeal of this sport.

A springy diving board would be capable of being mechanically depressed and then released, in order to propel the diver upwards before the diving descent.

This would allow much more time in the air for gymnastic performance.

The board could be finely controlled by a remote control device in the hand of the diver (which could be dropped after launch).

The board would also automatically withdraw from the side of the pool, once the diver was airborne, in order to avoid collisions on the way down.

#1943: NetSurfer

Surfing is tough to learn. Today’s invention is a surfboard which tries to make the whole balancing on a floating board thing a little easier.

In calm water, a training surfboard could be fitted with a pressure pad on the upper surface and a small directable drive unit on the underside (with shielded propeller).

The pressure pad could detect pressure asymmetry on the board and direct the propeller to steer towards the higher pressure side.

This would be controlled by the kind of neural network which can be reliably trained to help with pole balancing in realtime.

#1942: WashWarn

Today’s invention is a way to encourage people to wash their hands after using public toilets.

There are often just as many sinks as toilet cubicles, so why not site one sink inside each cubicle?

A user closes the cubicle door and if, when they open it again, they have not run the tap for at least 30 seconds, a light switches on over the door -together with a loud message of admonition ‘Washing your hands helps protect everyone’s health, bozo.’

(Ok, maybe not the last part, but you get my drift).

#1941: Heatchet

Despite the damage it no doubt does to the environment, by pumping out carbon dioxide, I do like my wood burning stove.

I don’t like the job of starting fires though -especially the business of needing wood of different sizes on hand as kindling.

Today’s invention is a way to use the fire to generate its own kindling for the next day’s fire lighting.

A copper bar within the fire is held in place by two levers. As the bar heats, two blades at the ends of the levers are forced into the ends of a log beneath the fire, splitting it enough to act as kindling.

Several such bars could act simultaneously on several logs.

#1940: PlugPlus

I’m again a bit annoyed that electronics companies seem to have hired no mechanical engineers. Why else do they continue to make electrical connections as robust as glass?

Today’s invention is a way to overcome the terrible problems associated with micro-usb connections (without losing all the benefit of small plugs).

If this tiny bit of kit attached to your new mobile device breaks or gets hamfistedly misaligned and damages the system’s interior, you are into the zone of throw it away and fork out for a new one.

Instead, how about retro-fitting a nice, smoothly contoured plug which fits onto the female connection within your device for as long as it lasts?

When you want to charge or undertake data transfer, you plug into this a nice big strong, positive-contact connector which is itself a permanent home for the standard, brittle male component on the end of the cable.