Innovation is Dead

[Inventor]

I am so sick and tired of trying to be an Inventor and getting my ideas shot down or ignored by the entire fucking world. While I do have my name on a few patents and have derived a tiny amount of income from inventing for companies, the cold fact of life is that my good stuff - my really good stuff - goes ignored by the world. It's very frustrating.

In fact, it's worse than that people don't just ignore you for creating new stuff. they fear you and attack you and ridicule you. "Don't rock the boat". "Be a team player." "Fit in." Such are the comments of the engineering cattle who think in boxes and gather together in cliques, enjoying with pleasure the suffering of the individualist victims that they persecute. It's frickin horrible. I could probably list several really good inventions that I have developed or imagined or patented or pursued in some way that have gone nowhere. In fact I think I will.

1. The Cooperative Ring Oscillator, a distributed clocking network for making microprocessors clock faster. Failed to get the attention of industry critics who prefer the (IMHO) inferior H-Tree approach.

2. Miniature Injectable Radiation Sensor, a simplified approach to a product that got overcomplicated by in-the-box thinkers who put an entire computer system on an injectable implant instead of making something really small and simple like i proposed. Of course, history shows us that the company folded because the FDA never approved their product. Why? I don't know, maybe because of all those toxic chemicals in the frickin microprocessor? Sheesh.

3. Low Loss Recifier, replaces a diode with a MOSFET and a steering circuit, resulting in a low-loss device for power applications. Also made a low-loss full-wave bridge rectifier out of four MOSFETs. I got a provisional patent on this one and tried to convince industry including google who actually asked for solutions that make PCs more efficient, and was ignored.

4. The stun knife, nuff said.

5. The guitar pickup, working on that one now, but getting lots of rejection from all attempts to generate interest in this excellent technology.

6. A Spherical speaker design, have only imagined this. locked in my head. the only safe place for information is in your head, remember.

7. A conventional speaker design, locked in my head, probably for good, lol.

8. The projection LED. Take an ordinary LED and create a ball lens above it via depositing glass layers (SiO2) during the semiconductor manufacturing process, or by molding it's enclosure/packaging. Turns the LED into a laser-like beam of light. Make arrays of them. Revolutionize the video projector. Is anybody listening?

9. Light collumnator. Take any non-point source light such as a halogen bulb and focus it into a parallel heat beam. Combine multiple beams with lenses or additional collumnators. This is a practical light ray weapon or tool. Not sure if it will work, but if it does it's powerful.

10. Endless other designs that I come up with constantly.

Does anybody listen? Does anybody care? No. Innovation is Dead.

Les

[v-un-v]

I don't think innovation is dead, just look at your list!

What is dead is the current glut of 'get rich quick' venture capitalists. They are the ones who are dead. "Team player"? No chance of that if you are going to have 1 ounce of originality.

I love you Les. You are an inspiration! Keep up the good work!

[Inventor]

You are so right Tom, I stand corrected! Innovation lives, but "the man" attempts to squash it. Down with the man!

Les

[seraph]

[Inventor]

[v-un-v]

Yep. I wanna see another 4000+ posts by this time next year!

[nobody]

Les, those are awesome ideas! I look forward to owning a Les Hall guitar some day. And I'd really like to see a spherical speaker.

I suspect that most, if not all, inventors have to deal with ridicule during their lifetimes (I know most people have utterly blank reactions to my socio-political ideas - ideas designed with the betterment of human life in mind. Some even insult or verbally abuse me. Fuck 'em!). That has nothing to do with the inventor. It has everything to do with the low intelligence of people and their refusal to move out of known comfort zones, even to move to an even more comfortable zone. However, everything in anyone's particular current comfort zone was once considered "wacky" or outright taboo. Trust in the lessons of history, Les. Your stuff WILL come to pass!

[lordavon]

in general I agree, it's not innovation that's dead, it's that people won't touch an idea unless they can see money from it.

About 10 years ago I spoke with a UK shop about making a small format modular, say 3U and that would fit in a 19" rack, he laughed and said no-one would be interested.... he's now the UK distributer for Dopfer...

I've had similar experiences with many of my ideas (one I'm working on at the moment is a digitally patchable analogue modular, removing all patch cables and allowing instant patch/parameter recall across 128 modules), so now, I don't discuss them, or try and sell them, I design them, I prototype them and then I make them...

If people like them, they can buy a kit or a built version, if they don't that's fine... what is important to me is that I'm making stuff based on my ideas, I dont mind if 1 person or 1,000,000 people like it... it's my hobby, it's my head, it's my idea

one of my mottos was gained from a film "Don't dream it, be it"... I feel it applies to ideas as well as lifestyle choices

So, don't give up just cause you can't sell your idea.. make it, and if people are interested, they'll follow.

Paul

[Inventor]

yes, i do make my ideas when i can. i prototype them in physical or software form. the trouble i run into is the old "it takes money to make money" puzzle. If i were to offer a kit, i would first have to purchase parts for said kit and on a fixed income from the government it is really tough to save that up. In fact, I owe someone money from the last batch of circuit boards that i had made and it's getting to be a long-term debt! No worries, I'll pay it soon.

What I need to do is get smart and offer a simple, popular kit that is small enough and simple enough that I CAN actually afford to get the parts for a few kits. Then I can grow from there. Actually, just last night in fact, I built such a circuit from parts I already have.

So if i'm smart, which supposedly i am, i'll put together a BOM and sell the kit. well, no time like the present... gee i feel a new beginning on the horizon!

Les

[Inventor]

I constructed a prototype with the notion of making kits, then i thought - why not just sell the prototype? It makes cool sounds and is fairly sturdy, not enclosed but that's ok. I can't sell here, so if you are interested please have a look at my sales post on this forum, which is here:

http://electro-music.com/forum/post-319695.html#319695

In fact, I believe I will buld more stuff and sell it... this is fun!

Les

[lordavon]

raising money is difficult, and there can be a big "leap of faith" involved.

However, I've been looking into "kickstarter" (http://www.kickstarter.com/) which looks like a really good thing for several reasons:

1) you really only need invest a bit of time once and create a single prototype
2) you can raise the investment you needed from the people who want it
3) you can guage interest in your project (no sponsors = no interest).

there's a similar thing here in the UK, but the kickstarter website has some great projects, look at the power laces project (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1230434124/power-laces) they raised $25,000 dolalrs in a few weeks!!!

Paul

[Inventor]

I tried kickstart for my guitar project and was turned down. Not sure why. Maybe I'll try again.

Les

[lordavon]

they should've given you a reason for turning you down, kinda sucks they didn't..

Paul

[Inventor]

I think they said something vague like "is not right for us" or whatever. I did something unusual and offered modified guitars as rewards for larger contributors. That may have put them off.

I also just listed The Brick music synthesizer for sale, see our for sale subforum for that.

Les

[nobody]

[nobody]

[nobody]

[Inventor]

well, i am happy to mention that i sold the prototype. Now I'm going to buy parts for more things to sell with the money. Whoot!

Les

[Antimon]

Congratz!

[Inventor]

Just bought some heap big lotsa supplies from smallbear and digikey for completion of one more box and two kits. Whoot, little biz is shaping up nicely.

Les

[nobody]

Alright, Les!