Financial Blocks - The best inventions are free!

If a combination of brilliant inventors and wealth occurred in history it is rarely the case modern times. If there ever were a time where currency is crucial for an invention to rise through the cement floors of documentation, risk assessments, patents, marketing, laws, and safety reports (that all exist for our benefits we might argue), it is the present time. But time could be at a changing point, circling around the dominating investors dictating what inventions are needed!

Many idealistic inventors have had the idea of free applications of discoveries should benefit humanity. Nikola Teslas (1856-1943) dream of free energy is just one of these. He believed so intensively in this idea that he tore up the patent contract that entitled him to royalties on the all the electricity we now take for granted, possibly making him the richest man on earth.
So far the wall every inventor meets is raising enough finances to do research, build and improve. Competition is tough, and money is often earmarked in narrow fields (designed on demand by industry, universities and politicians) like the EU framework program. It may be tough for a totally original idea to be considered in such a context. So what to do when there are no money from the investors?

The current revolution of the IT-era could open a possibility: free innovation. Or perhaps innovation paid directly by the users rather than investors.
Look at the approach of Wikibooks in helping to solve the knot of how to educate people in developing countries. One plan is to write 1000 books of education by qualified people though Wikipedias online tools, and make them available for free. The project is driven, on a book level, by sponsors who wish to be associated with the developing markets. With one new approach, greedy bureaucrats, international politics, and outdated books, are elegantly chess mated.

Independent programmers increasingly release programs, many of them open source, for free use on the internet, and live off voluntary donations. The debated peer to peer internet technology, BitTorrent (by Bram Cohen) is just one example. A technology that is just at its beginning of its applications, and has lead to inventions such as free telecommunication (Skype). Voluntary donations have already spread into many internet based projects from pop culture (comic books, independent music artists) to humanitarian movements (The Hunger Site).

Individuals donating finances to projects rather than big interest based money tanks is probably a trend born from our ego centered culture and the new web technologies, but a powerful trend none the less. It would loosen some of the organized control and allow more chaos and creativity – evolution, in short. Firms also seem to have discovered that paying for exposure (commercials) is a way to finance projects on the internet (eg. The Hunger Site). If the trend develops over the years one can hope that at least some of the international resources could be redirected to help home inventors and great ideas on their feet. Perhaps free for everyone.

General introduction - Catch-22 of Innovation

When I entered the natural sciences I could not get the thought out of my head: How many amazing, perhaps revolutionary, inventions continuously are lost due to habits and rules of society, and why?

To give a little introduction, I would like to give an example of such an invention.

When I was 19 years old a local Danish TV program showed a short documentary on Erik Skaarups wave energy converter, he named “Bølgehøvlen” (now named WavePlane). The program planted the first seed of doubt in me whether truly innovative achievements are getting a place in our time.
Erik Skaarup explanation how he as a home inventor came up with the idea of harvesting wave energy in his bathtub made me smile, but it was the opposition his idea met at the most obvious investors (like the Danish government) that dazzled me! The depressing story of how he went from door to door of the investors was long, even with self financed test proofs of pilot models. The potential investor I remember the best was the Danish Ministry of the Environment who argued they did not find it necessary to invest in wave technology since they had wind power technology well developed. A paradoxal statement considering Danish politic has preached green energy and innovative solutions as part of up-keeping the national welfare and work places for decades. The story have not changed over the last 13 years from what I can read from the company website (www.WavePlane.com) who now has most investors in Norway and bases in Australia, Japan and USA. Time will tell if Danish investors made fools of themselves.

Now I have found that hundreds of incredible inventions and inventors, through news but also first hand, who never get to change the world for the better. And why? Is it the patent laws? Eccentric behavior? Lack of scientific proof? Lack of economic understanding from the inventor? Lack of understanding of the impact of the invention of the investor? Or is it because we, as civilization, just can not handle more than one revolution at a time (currently being the IT era)? I think it is all of the above. And in this blog I will try to give examples of these points of view.

To make myself understand this paradox, I created two groups of inventors: the Alchemist and the Scientist. I may be a son to a father of the first category, but am officially working as (and by the rules of) the latter. An Alchemist is a term I use in lack of better because it best fits the personal approach of discovery (home inventors, but more) in lack of better, not to mix up with the medieval magician. It is my opinion that these two groups approach inventions from opposite angles. The Scientist has to skeptically build all his discoveries on theories already established. Theories that are our best bet at describing reality, but far from do so.
An Alchemist plays around, discovers something works, believes in the invention, but then meets the modern age demand of nearly anal demands for documentation. Often this creates a catch-22, that few normal people have time or temper to satisfy. The result is that the invention dies with the owner, in the patent office or in the drawer.

If innovation and miracles are what we need to solve the 21st Century’s challenges, maybe we need to reevaluate our approach to discovery and the space we allow true originality. Welcome to my blog!