INNOVATIVE CRISIS
Invention is the mother of survival. The failure to remain innovative can result in the destruction of a civilization. To understand this fact we must learn from history. As an example, the 16th century Aztec civilization was many ways superior to the Spanish civilization of the same period. But the Spanish under Hernando Cortes defeated the Aztecs in A.D. 1521 because the former had iron and gunpowder whereas the latter did not. Gunpowder was invented by the Chinese about A.D. 900. In A.D.1242, it was introduced to England and Europe by Roger Bacon. This explosive powder was a simple ground mixture of 75 percent saltpeter (potassium nitrate), 15 percent charcoal, and 10 percent sulfur. No one knows when or by whom iron was invented. It was used by ancient people in China, India, Chaldea, Babylon, and Assyria. For thousands of years, men made iron by putting the ore in a hot deep fire of charcoal so the charcoal slowly combined with the oxygen in the ore. This allowed the oxygen to escape as a gas. Repeated heating and pounding (forging) forced out the ore impurities leaving wrought iron. Men later learned to add Dolomite limestone to the fire to help speed the removal of impurities. The Aztec’s had failed to discover these innovations. This lesson is still remembered, and today the super powers engage in espionage to steal each other’s inventions. They also race to create new weapons and other innovations designed to give one an advantage over the other. We now have global weapons of destruction, which if used, could bring us all back to iron weapons and gunpowder. Back to the subject.
Upon examination of statistics from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. it is obvious that there are now fewer and fewer inventions from the private inventor. By allowing ourselves to become a spectator society, we have lost much of the imagination needed to invent. If any individual has the spark to invent, he soon discovers that the process is long, difficult, expensive, and frustrating. If and when a private inventor gets a patent, he has only one chance in 35 of finding someone to manufacture and market his invention. And if it is marketed there is only a slight chance that his invention will make any real money. Few inventors have the marketing savvy needed to put their inventions on the market. Invention promotion companies can milk an inventor by taking his money to promote a patented invention that has little probability of selling. If an invention does look promising, a patent does not always offer protection. A large U.S. or foreign corporation has the knowledge and resources to engineer around a patent and quickly capture the market with a parallel invention. Over 80 percent of the inventions in this country are owned by government, corporations, research organizations, and big universities. The patent system is being used defensively and the individual inventor is loosing his incentive to invent. As a result, the annual number of new private inventions in the United States have decreased for several years. Our future technology, economic growth, and security are all being threatened because of the decline of the individual inventor. This is true because those persons who are salaried inventors have proven themselves to be less innovative. Yet any failure or delay in achieving one critical invention could put us in the same position in which the Aztec’s found themselves. The reasons may be different but the results could be the same.
