DOW-UAP-D134, AAWSAP DIRD, הממציא העצמאי מול הממציא התאגידי: מהיכן יצמחו החידושים הגדולים הבאים, מרץ 2010

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Defense
Intelligence
Reference
Document

FSi (w”sté‘siszrg Acquisition Threat Support

ICOD: 1 December 2009

Maverick Inventor Versus
Corporate Inventor: Where
Will the Next Major
Innovations Arise?

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Maverick Inventor Versus Corporate Inventor: Where Will
the Next Major Innovations Arise?

Prepared by:
Acquisition Support Division (DWO-3)
Defense Warning Office

Directorate for Analysis
Defense Intelligence Agency

Author:

AAP Person 75

Administrative Note

COPYRIGHT WARNING: Further dissemination of the photographs in this publication is not authorized.

This product is one in a series of advanced technology reports produced in FY 2009
under the Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Warning Office’s Advanced Aerospace

Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program. Comments or questions pertaining to
this document should be addressed Sartant __] AAWSA Program
Manager, Defense Intelligence Agency, ATTN: CLAR/DWO-3, Bldg 6000, Washington,

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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,…