Not invented here

In business school (and elsewhere) you hear a lot about the "not invented here" syndrome. Recently we came across some examples of it.

Two weeks ago, an associate and I met with the managing director of a large brokerage firm in downtown L.A. He told us of a company that was a leader in the computer components industry. One day, some researchers introduced a new technology that promised to significantly improve the performance of their products.

They chose not to adopt the new technology, and to stick with what had served them well for so long. Their competition adopted the new ideas and soon took over the leadership position in the industry.

Yesterday, the same associate and I met with an executive of a company that has been #1 in their industry (not computer components) for several years. He told us that he hoped his competition would continue to thrive because their existence kept his researchers motivated to incorporate improvements into their products.

One company suffered from the "not invented here" syndrome and is no longer a leader. The other doesn't and maintains its competitive edge. An obvious lesson.

A million cycles and counting

We just announced that our ultracapacitor device has withstood over 1 million charge/discharge cycles, with acceptable degradation (i.e., it has retained over 80% of its original capacitance).

This is one of the areas where ultracapacitors tend to out-perform batteries. Isidor Buchmann's book, Batteries in a Portable World, reports that the cycle life (i.e., to 80% of the battery's initial capacity) of various commercially-available batteries can range from as low as 50 cycles to 1500 depending on the chemistry (p. 29). In our investigations of microbatteries, we have seen reports of cycle lives as high as 80,000 and higher for very low power devices.

Ultracapacitors, however, have typically been much higher than batteries. 500,000 cycles is not uncommon. Many devices advertise over a million cycles.

To see ours reach this milestone is very exciting. In actual practice, it means that (considering the applications we're targeting) we're in very good shape!

One more thing about patents . . .

Intellectual property, of course, is a vital part of our business. And the patent process in the United States has some real issues.

In an earlier post (and the posts on this blog are a LOT earlier -- I'll try to improve our posting frequency) I menioned that some patents are taking as long as three years to grind their way through the system.

Well, I may have understated the problem.

At least one compay we've been following (NanoGram) filed a patent in June 2000 that covered using certain kinds of nanoparticles in batteries. Their patent was issued in May 2007 -- almost 7 years later!

I'm don't think this is typical, but it certainly can be looked at as a symptom of the backlog and (probably) staffing needs at the US Patent Office.

Legalizing Theft

The last post discussed an article in Fortune Small Business on the problems at the US Patent Office and some of the proposals out there to fix them. One of the proposals is to change the patent protection from first to invent to first to file -- meaning you could invent something first, but if someone else files a patent application before you, they get the rights.

There's a lot of controversy about this -- the article seems to say that larger businesses are generally for this change while smaller companies are against it (the reason being, larger companies can more easily beat smaller companies to the patent office because they have greater resources).

The latest issue of Fortune Small Business contains a letter from Lynn Sky (owner of Blue Sky Gallery) that asks the question: if we change the law from first to invent to first to file, then "aren't we simply legalizing theft?"

Good question.

Patents

The July/August edition of Forbes Small Business has an important and interesting article that discusses the overloaded US patent system. The backlog of applications is now at 800,000!

At a nanotech conference a year or so ago, I heard a patent attorney say that there is such a huge log jam of nanotech-related applications, the wait time before you receive your first comments from the patent office is usually about 3 years.

That seems to be a correct assessment -- we filed for our initial patent in March 2005. Since then it has been assigned to a reviewer, but we have heard nothing from the patent office, except the notification that they received it.

There are some reforms that are in the works, apparently. A bill is aimed at improving the quality of patent applications. However, the FSB article says that the bill would make things more difficult for small businesses.

In particular, the issues seem to be changing the protection from "first to invent" to "first to file", and limiting the damages.

The article says big businesses generally support the bill while small businesses oppose it.

Check out the aricle online at www.fsb.com.

Our corporate vision

Our company originally adopted the following corporate vision:

To provide innovative products that meet a need and to achieve success for our company and our shareholders while making a positive impact on our community.

The company has some core competencies – commercializing technologies is one of them (making nanowires is another). From the beginning, we didn’t want to limit ourselves to just microbatteries, or just nanowires. We don’t think of ourselves as a microbattery company, but more of a commercialization house.

We also didn’t want to limit our business plan to sub-licensing or manufacture. Some technologies would lend themselves to one more so than another. We’ve had quite a bit of experience in both areas.

As for those that lend themselves more to manufacturing – we know all too well that setting up a manufacturing line is not a trivial thing. So, it likely would make more sense to establish subsidiaries (wholly-owned or otherwise) to produce and sell those products. This requires people with some specific skill sets.

Those technologies that might do better as a license or sub-license require a completely different set of skills: IP and patent knowledge, negotiating skills, license agreements, etc.

Getting people to understand and accept a flexible business plan like this can be a little daunting. It’s not like we’re setting up a lemonade stand. But, ours is not an unprecedented idea, and I believe we are headed in the right direction.

Our first blog

I had been thinking about starting a blog on the website for some time now. The main reasons it took me so long to do it were because I was concerned about three things:

• Sticking with it. I didn’t want to start it only to have it die from non-use, so I wanted to make sure the writer(s) of the blog (probably mostly me) are committed to it. It’s disappointing to see things like this begin in a promising way, only to have the activity drop off over time.
  
  
• Making business sense. I was uncertain about the business reasons for the blog; there are many blogs run by Fortune 500 companies and -- although we’re closer to a Fortune 5,000,000 company -- that certainly lends some business credibility to the idea. Still, I felt there needed to be some compelling business reasons to do it. “Experts” apparently seem to identify four general reasons for businesses to set up blogs:
  
  1. To sell or promote something (or someone)
  2. To discuss business topics
  3. To put out information, or
  4. Some combination of the previous three items.
  
  I don’t want to sell anything on the blog, but I like the ideas of promoting the company, putting out information about the company and discussing things . . . which leads me to another concern:
  
  
• Keeping on-topic. We all have opinions about potentially divisive issues and I fear that some of us (including myself) are passionate enough about controversial topics to where we might pontificate on some of those issues. This is probably not appropriate in a company blog.

So, with the understanding that (1) the blog will strive to not end up stating some personal opinions on divisive issues, (2) that its purpose is to inform and familiarize people with us as individuals and the company as a whole, including its management and direction, and (3) with the commitment that something will be posted on a regular basis, I will undertake to get started regaling you with the wonders and insights of the people that comprise Enable IPC. I hope you enjoy the blog and I hope you post your comments, good and bad.

We are striving to obtain perfection and secure the entire wealth of knowledge the universe has to offer – but we’re not quite there yet. So, your wisdom will be a welcome addition to this endeavor.