Stuart Macdonald
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199241477
- eISBN:
- 9780191696947
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199241477.003.0007
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Innovation, Organization Studies
This chapter explains how organizations resist information from external sources. It starts with an elaboration of the not-invented-here (NIH) syndrome, the condition in which organizations reject ...
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This chapter explains how organizations resist information from external sources. It starts with an elaboration of the not-invented-here (NIH) syndrome, the condition in which organizations reject external information gathered from external sources. Relating to the appearance of NIH syndrome is the refusal of organizations to recognize independent inventors who may offer chances to promote great innovations and change the way organizations operate. The chapter then discusses how different government policies in different countries support independent inventors, including the patent system. It ends by citing how independent inventors can innovate things that ‘big organizations’ have provided for ‘big science’.Less
This chapter explains how organizations resist information from external sources. It starts with an elaboration of the not-invented-here (NIH) syndrome, the condition in which organizations reject external information gathered from external sources. Relating to the appearance of NIH syndrome is the refusal of organizations to recognize independent inventors who may offer chances to promote great innovations and change the way organizations operate. The chapter then discusses how different government policies in different countries support independent inventors, including the patent system. It ends by citing how independent inventors can innovate things that ‘big organizations’ have provided for ‘big science’.
Donald G. Godfrey
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038280
- eISBN:
- 9780252096150
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038280.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This is the first biography of the important but long-forgotten American inventor Charles Francis Jenkins (1867–1934). The book documents the life of Jenkins from his childhood in Indiana and early ...
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This is the first biography of the important but long-forgotten American inventor Charles Francis Jenkins (1867–1934). The book documents the life of Jenkins from his childhood in Indiana and early life in the West to his work as a prolific inventor whose productivity was cut short by an early death. Jenkins was an inventor who made a difference. As one of America's greatest independent inventors, Jenkins' passion was to meet the needs of his day and the future. In 1895 he produced the first film projector able to show a motion picture on a large screen, coincidentally igniting the first film boycott among his Quaker viewers when the film he screened showed a woman's ankle. Jenkins produced the first American television pictures in 1923, and developed the only fully operating broadcast television station in Washington, D.C. transmitting to ham operators from coast to coast as well as programming for his local audience. This biography raises the profile of C. Francis Jenkins from his former place in the footnotes to his rightful position as a true pioneer of today's film and television. Along the way, it provides a window into the earliest days of both motion pictures and television as well as the now-vanished world of the independent inventor.Less
This is the first biography of the important but long-forgotten American inventor Charles Francis Jenkins (1867–1934). The book documents the life of Jenkins from his childhood in Indiana and early life in the West to his work as a prolific inventor whose productivity was cut short by an early death. Jenkins was an inventor who made a difference. As one of America's greatest independent inventors, Jenkins' passion was to meet the needs of his day and the future. In 1895 he produced the first film projector able to show a motion picture on a large screen, coincidentally igniting the first film boycott among his Quaker viewers when the film he screened showed a woman's ankle. Jenkins produced the first American television pictures in 1923, and developed the only fully operating broadcast television station in Washington, D.C. transmitting to ham operators from coast to coast as well as programming for his local audience. This biography raises the profile of C. Francis Jenkins from his former place in the footnotes to his rightful position as a true pioneer of today's film and television. Along the way, it provides a window into the earliest days of both motion pictures and television as well as the now-vanished world of the independent inventor.
Jill D. Snider
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781469654355
- eISBN:
- 9781469654379
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469654355.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
The Introduction provides an overview of the life of early African American inventor, aviator, auto racer, engineer, and entrepreneur, Lucean Arthur Headen, It also prefaces the biography’s main ...
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The Introduction provides an overview of the life of early African American inventor, aviator, auto racer, engineer, and entrepreneur, Lucean Arthur Headen, It also prefaces the biography’s main themes, including Headen’s childhood influences; the obstacles he faced as an African American independent inventor, including segregation and the increasing corporatization of invention; the social networks on which he relied to build his career; the “coalition economics” strategy he employed to succeed; his emigration to England in 1931 and his career there until his death in 1957; his legacy as a designer of automotive engine improvements and anti-icing methods for aircraft; and his role as a transportation technology promoter.Less
The Introduction provides an overview of the life of early African American inventor, aviator, auto racer, engineer, and entrepreneur, Lucean Arthur Headen, It also prefaces the biography’s main themes, including Headen’s childhood influences; the obstacles he faced as an African American independent inventor, including segregation and the increasing corporatization of invention; the social networks on which he relied to build his career; the “coalition economics” strategy he employed to succeed; his emigration to England in 1931 and his career there until his death in 1957; his legacy as a designer of automotive engine improvements and anti-icing methods for aircraft; and his role as a transportation technology promoter.
Jill D. Snider
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781469654355
- eISBN:
- 9781469654379
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469654355.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Chapter 3 describes Headen’s life in Jersey City, NJ, from 1903 to 1911, a period in which he worked as a Pullman porter and as a dining car waiter for the Erie Railroad. It documents his life as a ...
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Chapter 3 describes Headen’s life in Jersey City, NJ, from 1903 to 1911, a period in which he worked as a Pullman porter and as a dining car waiter for the Erie Railroad. It documents his life as a trainman, his growing interest in aviation, his frustrations at being locked out of skilled work, and his initial forays into invention. The chapter examines how Headen’s wife, Tena Drye Headen, and other African American migrants active in Lafayette Presbyterian Church and the Railroad Porters’ and Waiters’ Voluntary Subscription Fund, expanded social networks critical to Headen, and on the specific strategies that Headen observed other African American inventors employ to circumvent segregation and raise capital in a time when funding for independent inventors was waning.Less
Chapter 3 describes Headen’s life in Jersey City, NJ, from 1903 to 1911, a period in which he worked as a Pullman porter and as a dining car waiter for the Erie Railroad. It documents his life as a trainman, his growing interest in aviation, his frustrations at being locked out of skilled work, and his initial forays into invention. The chapter examines how Headen’s wife, Tena Drye Headen, and other African American migrants active in Lafayette Presbyterian Church and the Railroad Porters’ and Waiters’ Voluntary Subscription Fund, expanded social networks critical to Headen, and on the specific strategies that Headen observed other African American inventors employ to circumvent segregation and raise capital in a time when funding for independent inventors was waning.
Lillian Hoddeson and Peter Garrett
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780262037532
- eISBN:
- 9780262345033
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262037532.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This is the first full-length biography of the prolific inventor Stanford R. Ovshinsky (1922-2012). Ovshinsky’s discoveries led to the creation of many important information and energy technologies, ...
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This is the first full-length biography of the prolific inventor Stanford R. Ovshinsky (1922-2012). Ovshinsky’s discoveries led to the creation of many important information and energy technologies, from phase-change electronic memories and rewritable CDs and DVDs to nickel metal hydride batteries, thin-film solar panels, and flat panel displays. In the process, his work helped open a new scientific research area centered on amorphous and disordered materials. A brilliant, self-educated pioneer of materials science, Ovshinsky began his career as a machinist and toolmaker before becoming an independent inventor and later the charismatic director of his own substantial research and development laboratory, Energy Conversion Devices (ECD). Guided by the social democratic values of his youth, he worked for nearly half a century with his partner and second wife Iris, eventually with hundreds of collaborators, to address important social problems like climate change. At the same time, their progressive values shaped the culture of the ECD community as a model egalitarian organization. Ovshinsky’s important contributions include his alternative energy technologies, with which he aimed to reduce and eventually eliminate dependence on fossil fuels. Increasingly important are the semiconductor devices based on his discovery of the Ovshinsky switching effect, which are becoming the basis of new information technologies.Less
This is the first full-length biography of the prolific inventor Stanford R. Ovshinsky (1922-2012). Ovshinsky’s discoveries led to the creation of many important information and energy technologies, from phase-change electronic memories and rewritable CDs and DVDs to nickel metal hydride batteries, thin-film solar panels, and flat panel displays. In the process, his work helped open a new scientific research area centered on amorphous and disordered materials. A brilliant, self-educated pioneer of materials science, Ovshinsky began his career as a machinist and toolmaker before becoming an independent inventor and later the charismatic director of his own substantial research and development laboratory, Energy Conversion Devices (ECD). Guided by the social democratic values of his youth, he worked for nearly half a century with his partner and second wife Iris, eventually with hundreds of collaborators, to address important social problems like climate change. At the same time, their progressive values shaped the culture of the ECD community as a model egalitarian organization. Ovshinsky’s important contributions include his alternative energy technologies, with which he aimed to reduce and eventually eliminate dependence on fossil fuels. Increasingly important are the semiconductor devices based on his discovery of the Ovshinsky switching effect, which are becoming the basis of new information technologies.
