AAWSAP DIRD, Maverick Inventor Versus Corporate Inventor: Where Will the Next Major Innovations Arise, March 2010

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The Type 4 Inventor
If a maverick inventor educated in science or engineering already has personal funding,
many of the attributes ascribed to the Type 3 inventor also apply. However, the Type 4
inventor is freer to pursue his innovation without as much concern for outside opinion.
It is often the case that such inventors have made their money from previous
inventions, so they already know the process. They have a much easier time attracting
capital, as evidenced by their track records. However, not all have money from previous
inventions. Some have family wealth, and some may have made money developing
technology in areas somewhat removed from their current interest.
Type 4 inventors generally are less inclined to pursue inventions in the areas of energy
generation and propulsion as defined above. In fact, the likelihood of such inventors
even being interested in novel primary energy generation or gravity modification is
greatly diminished. They still tackle difficult technical challenges, but not generally
fundamental issues like gravity and primary energy. It is by avoiding these supremely
difficult areas that they have been able to invent in other areas and are thus already
better funded!
Type 4 inventors realize the necessity of a step-by-step approach and the pitfalls of
developing ideas from scratch. They tend to apply their genius to improvements to
status quo in these areas rather than providing complete breakthroughs. For instance,
Kamen's Segway (Reference 29) contains no fundamentally new technology. Although
Ovshinsky (Reference 30) did manage to develop new materials for solar electricity
generation, the general idea of harnessing the Sun's energy to produce electricity was
not new. Incidentally, Ovshinsky is included in this category even though he had no
formal university education but is a self-taught genius. Notwithstanding their aversion
to the fundamental issues relevant to this study, Type 4 inventors are capable of
determining at an early stage whether an idea has merit and how it might properly be
developed, assuming the basic concept is sound.
It should be noted that Type 1 and 2 inventors usually are true loners, whereas Types 3
and 4 may be part of a small group of up to 3-4 people dedicated to a single objective.
What can be learned from the Type 4 inventor is quite similar to that of the Type 3
inventor. The major differ,ence is the track record of invention and the likely increased
business sense of the Type 4 inventor compared with those of the Type 3 inventor.
The Type 5 Inventor
Here one starts to see an overlap in form and function with the corporate inventor. The
primary distinction is the number of active inventors constituting the group: in this
study, we assume that 5-6 inventors is a typical group size. The small group setting
allows the individuals to bounce seemingly crazy ideas back and forth with little concern
about ridicule. Depending on the nature of the organization, no topic is taboo. However,
the inventor in this situation is usually required to contribute to near-term commercial
products rather than exotic innovations. This is because most small groups of inventors
are primarily interested in keeping their enterprise afloat. They realize that the effort
required to tackle topics such as gravity and primary energy would be enormous, and
although the payoff would be exceedingly large, the probability of success is small
given that their competitors are in well-funded academic and government laboratories.
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