Comments on: Beyond the Box

By: gil n garcia

gil n garcia — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:06:28 +0000

It is amazing at how readers can have such negative and sarcastic comments about this article. While wide ranging in thought and reference, it is nevertheless provocative. I especially appreciate the focus on working across agencies and parties. And I like the appeal to evaluate the impact of innovations right from the start.

By: Michael F. Sarabia

Michael F. Sarabia — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 02:05:23 +0000

There are so many fine comments already that I fear mine will make no difference, I agree with the view “So, in summary, the elite government officials want more money and power, and the elite tech executives want more money routed into their very own pockets and out of the pockets of scientists and engineers and inventors and farmers and machinists and tool and die makers, and the whole “innovation agenda” is transparent lobbyist propaganda.”
I see it as the “formula” to a high salary position where someone with GREAT Resume but no record of innovations is put in charge and they try to “manage” projects, even to death. Of course, they have the excuse ready.
Let’s be clear, Edison did not need and had no use for a manager. Nobody told Einstein, “write a Theory of Relativity”. Only the non-innovators need some one to tell them what to think.
The best incentive was found by ARPA and its string of successes grows bigger, the more they declassify.
It is very, very, simple: Have a Contest and reward the winner that survives to the end and gets there first.
There is no need to hire a big company to build 1,000 copies. Just give them the cash and publicity and companies from the world will do their part and produce it, without any government help. If help is needed, the idea is no good.
Set up a place where anybody can suggest categories and specific applications within each category and stand back, let the genius of America, and the world, rush in and compete for the BIG prize.
You want a way to fight wildfires? Produce Hydrogen from Windmills?, a cheaper way to drill for geothermal power?, etc. Just give us a way to define the object and you define the Cash worth of the prize.
Imagine a contest on the best way to make the Polar bear survive without ice floes! I can hear the neurons ticking already, all the way from here (my entry is ready).
The trouble might be that those that reach high position, and high salaries, have made few, or no, mistakes and get rewarded for that.
Inovators are famous for their “bragging rights” Werner Von Braun said “It is not that I knew more than anybody else but that made more mistakes than anybody else and learnt from that”, I am sure in the original German it was more potent an statement, jah vohl.

By: David L.Baker

David L.Baker — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 02:33:39 +0000

A process was devloped 15 years ago that turned waste
and other organic materials into crude oil.
The research people did not want a solution– they
want research funds and meetings-papers to read.

$400,000 shot down. No one ever looked at it-but they
told people it would not work.

You will not get innovation–only talk

By: Sandy Fackler

Sandy Fackler — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:38:01 +0000

May I go a bit off topic and ask what jgo and the others who use the word “elite” as a negative believe the word means? Here’s what I got from the Am. Heritage Dictionary on line: e·lite or é·lite (ĭ-lēt’, ā-lēt’)
n. pl. elite or e·lites

A group or class of persons or a member of such a group or class, enjoying superior intellectual, social, or economic status: “In addition to notions of social equality there was much emphasis on the role of elites and of heroes within them” (Times Literary Supplement).
The best or most skilled members of a group: the football team’s elite.
A size of type on a typewriter, equal to 12 characters per linear inch.

[French élite, from Old French eslite, from feminine past participle of eslire, to choose, from Latin ēligere; see elect.]
e·lite’ adj.

Maybe they don’t like the word because it came from the French? Or is this just a fine example of the dumbing down of the USA and its citizens? Or maybe this is just misuse of the English language same as “liberal”?

By: jgo

jgo — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:50:14 +0000

So, in summary, the elite government officials want more money and power, and the elite tech executives want more money routed into their very own pockets and out of the pockets of scientists and engineers and inventors and farmers and machinists and tool and die makers, and the whole “innovation agenda” is transparent lobbyist propaganda.