Punishments all innovators risk

Some Silicon Valley bromides have become repeated so often they are now almost insufferable. The notion that behind every success are myriad failures, for example, or the sense that if someone’s not laughing at your big idea, it’s not something worth doing. Enough of that. It’s time to stop glossing over the obstacles to turning breakthrough thinking into something of real value.

As we near the end of the year there may be some Canadian researchers mulling a big decision over the holidays: whether or not to take the work they’re doing to the next level. This could mean filing a patent, licensing intellectual property, or turning their research into an actual product, service or startup. This lull between semesters, when many organizations are on a kind of hiatus, isn’t a bad time to consider such things. They may also, however, think not only of the good things that can happen on the path to commercialization, but a lot of the bad things, too.

There is, first of all, the risk of nothing happening. Of those providing funding turning a deaf ear, or those who could benefit from the IP completely misunderstanding or ignoring its potential. There is also the opposite risk: of getting too much interest from all the wrong sources, from those who make poor use of the research breakthrough provided to them for ends that the original experiments were never intended. Being laughed at isn’t fun, but far worse is having what feels like a genuine innovation overlooked or abused.

By the same token, these “punishments” exist for a reason. Not every idea is a good one. Not all intellectual property is worthy of commercialization or development. If it’s harder to get some innovations noticed, it can even be a healthy sign that there is a surplus of innovation working its way through the system. Some ideas will be taken in the wrong direction and reach a natural dead end. These are all really just forms of saying “no” to an innovator. Anyone pursuing something amazing in user experience design, gamification or interactive display needs to have enough faith that getting to “yes” is worth the risk of its alternative.

Although I failed to take note of who said it, I saw someone in my Twitter stream make a comment the other day that went along the likes of, “The tech geniuses in their 20s in Silicon Valley are geniuses at coming up with things that solve the problems of white guys in their 20s.” It was funny because it feels true. It also demonstrates why we need innovations from as many educational backgrounds and disciplines as possible. Particularly in Canada, where the geography is huge but the population relatively small, we need more innovators to be attracted not only by the rewards of commercialization but by the satisfaction of confronting the risks head-on.

I hope in these last six months CommerceLab has begun to serve as a source of that courage, inspiration and support that will lead to more innovation across the country and beyond. Though we’ll be taking a short break from our usual publishing schedule over the holidays starting next week, expect to see even more — and even better — in 2014.