The Return of the Lone Inventor

After World War II, most contemporary observers would have agreed with Harvard president James B. Conant, who declared in 1951 that “the typical lone inventor of the eighteenth and nineteenth century has all but disappeared. In his place in the mid-twentieth century came the industrial research laboratory.” Fast forward 50 years. In 2005, Forbes hailed “the return of the lone inventor;” meanwhile, The Economist (2007) reported that “technology firms have left the big corporate R&D laboratory behind.” What happened? Drawing on patent statistics, contemporary news accounts, and the records of inventors and firms, this talk considers the changing fortunes of American independent inventors and corporate R&D labs from approximately 1950 to 2015. I argue that, during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, corporate R&D dominated the overall context of innovation and temporarily marginalized the independents. However, since the 1980s, independent inventors have enjoyed a renaissance that continues through the present.
 
For further information, please contact: Tom Lassman at 202-633- 2419; lassmant@si.edu.
 
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