The current system of funding innovation is broken and it needs changing

There’s a problem in America.  It lies in how we fund our future.   We’ve turned our future over to a few individuals and corporations who’ve never heard of the simple rule that “the secret in life is to not be too greedy”.   But even if they had, they’d sneer and scoff at it.

Let’s examine this problem more closely:

1.   America’s greatness in the past stemmed from one place: its ability to innovate. And its ability to innovate was dependent on one type of person: the independent inventor. All the true innovators, all the great inventors of the past, started out as independent inventors.

2.  True innovation (new inventions, not startups) is the only real hope for any kind of future for the U.S. and its larger economy, i.e., the millions and millions of people who will otherwise be unemployed when Artificial Intelligence (AI) finally kicks in bigtime (this includes code writers and software architects as well). That is, if the U.S. economy has a future at all.

3.  Startups, by themselves, are not the solution.  Too many fail and those that don’t, and finally make it to the bigtime get acquired.  And, when they do get acquired, their engineers get redeployed in the acquirer’s business elsewhere (there’s a new phrase in the law’s M&A lexicon for this development; it’s called “acquir-hire”). The way it works is that the value of the business is determined by how many quality engineers the target business employs in crucial roles and how much each one is worth.  The purchase price for the business is then computed on that basis. Everyone else gets fired. Any millennial who loves startups and doesn’t know this simple truth is just uninformed.

4.  So, this leads us to a foundational principle: if we want to save this country, the way to do it is to encourage more innovation by individuals who might actually have the stuff (i.e., Tom Wolfe’s, “the right stuff”) to become successful independent inventors.

    Now, we know from studies and the resulting statistics, two important things:

    First: There are millions and millions of “would-be” inventors in this country.

    Second: Most “would-be” inventors never try to move forward with their invention because of perceived limitations or obstacles, including:

    • No (or not enough) money
    • No encouragement at home (i.e., a spouse) or among friends and family
    • Fear of failure
    • Ignorance and lack of education about the inventing process and how to be successful at it.

      So, that leads us to a question:  What can we do about this problem?  How can we encourage more innovation in America?  How can we turn more of these “would-be” inventors into “newbies”? 

      The answer is to create a business that either ameliorates, or entirely eliminates, these perceived limitations and obstacles. Create one that has or does the following:

      1. With a minimal investment on their part, provide these “would-be” inventors with enough money for them to try their hand at the inventing process.

      2. Replace the lack of encouragement they receive at the hands of family and friends, with enthusiasm and clearly-felt support for their undertaking.

      3. Subject them and their inventions to a thorough vetting process by people who live inside the inventing “beltway” and know what they’re doing.  That will ensure these “newbies” that their chances for significant success increases exponentially, while the probability of complete failure is reduced to virtually zero.

      4. Make sure that the process you create for them to journey through does, at a minimum and at the end of the day, at least one thing: it educates them and makes them wise in ways that, traditionally, only a substantial investment by them in themselves and then the ultimate complete failure or success of their project, could otherwise provide, i.e., providing them with an experience that makes them “wiser” without making them “sadder”.

      Well, the good news is that in the near future there will be such a business: it’s called Archimedes’ Offspring.  Taking its name from the famous Greek scientist, mathematician and, most importantly, inventor of antiquity, in the future Archimedes’ Offspring (AOS) will offer the independent inventor, or “would-be” inventor, a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity to get the money, assistance and access that traditionally only a very few lucky independent inventors have been able to secure and which, in the current climate, is otherwise virtually impossible to obtain.

      To learn more about this potentially significant opportunity, check out AOS at its website. Here’s the address: www.archimedesoffspring.com.