The Big Idea: Capital Market Funds For Invention - Harvard Business Review

Here is a very interesting idea from Nathan Myhrvold, the former Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft. As the cofounder of Intellectual Ventures, he has been reviled as a patent troll - a renegade who buys up patents and uses them to hold up companies. Nothing could be further from the truth. In this worthwhile article from Harvard Business Review, he proposes the world needs a capital market for invention like the venture capital market for start-ups and the private equity market for revitalizing inefficient companies. The argument: Inventing—producing useful, patent-worthy ideas—is a dysfunctional, cash-starved activity that’s overly dependent on government largesse because it is not organized as a for-profit activity. A better approach:

Click to read more ...

Shutting down the idea factory

e economic downturn has hurt just about everyone: individuals, businesses, banks and even governments. But an unreported effect may have the most negative impact. The unnamed victim in this economy is 'innovation.' The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is laying off people because so little is happening. "A reporter for the Associated Press named Deb Reichmann first spotted the problem. At a time when we are being urged to invent the new future of American business and energy, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is laying off people because so little is happening.Venture capitalists, who always underwrite the next big thing, have invested $3 billion in the first quarter of this year. But that's down by nearly 50 percent from six months ago. Just when we need a flood of innovation in America, the money to make it happen has become a trickle." Is the situation any different in Canada? No. Canadian journalist David Crane wrote an editorial on the release of

Click to read more ...

Bring Your Ideas to life at Camp Invention

Visit http://www.inventnow.org/ to start