Defense Intelligence Reference Document Maverick Inventor Versus Corporate Inventor

UNCLASSIFIED/ ;/
Maverick Inventor Versus Corporate Inventor: Where Will
the Next Major Innovations Arise?
Introduction
Technological innovation has been advanced by several sectors of human
society and via a diverse set of circumstances. In the early 20th century, the
solitary maverick inventor was responsible for the bedrock of most of today's
industrial and commercial enterprises. As these enterprises grew larger, they
could afford their own research and development departments, tasking them
with developing products and processes aimed at increasing the market share
of the parent company. Generally speaking, as time went on these types of
enterprises became less hotbeds of true innovation than places where
improvements to the current technologies were tightly managed. Such
management became stultifying for many inventors wishing to produce true
innovation, and these mavericks shunned the commercial research agencies
and went off to carry out their own brand of research.
Another institution where true innovation is fostered is the university.
University research as it exists today started in Europe only in the 18th
century. The bulk of the discoveries in science leading to technological
innovation came from university research laboratories in the 19th and early
20th centuries. Currently there is considerable controversy surrounding the
degree to which research at universities is free from external influences,
whether from within the university, from the greater scientific community, or
from public and/or private agencies that fund the research. As university
salaries and expenses go up, there is increasing reliance on external funding
sources, the majority of which wish to exert some influence over the type of
research they are underwriting.
Human aggression and human needs gave birth to two additional areas of
innovation. As governments became embroiled in conflicts, they found the
need to fund "think tanks" for the purposes of stimulating scientific
developments that could aid war efforts. As well, the needs of their
constituents for food, shelter, health care, energy, economic development,
space exploration, and so forth demanded the establishment of government-
funded agencies to perform research and produce policy. To be effective,
military planners needed access to the most innovative technologies in all
areas of endeavor, not just armaments, and so established their own research
and development departments.
Circumstances determine the temporal requirement for innovation. Modern
versions of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (wars, pestilence, lies,
famine/death: read conflict, environment, economy, health) pretty well sum
up the major stimulants that foster innovation. Fortunately, human society-at
least so far-has shown a remarkable propensity for inventing methods of
overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
This paper concentrates on two areas of technological innovation where
solutions have been particularly hard to come by-namely energy and
iv
UNCLASSIFIED/ ;CF9A: 9FFHiil.11k Wlili &••LY