Grasping the bigger picture

The world is full of frustrated inventors, with harrowing tales of how they were either ignored or taken advantage of by major companies. But the truth is not so much about big guys taking advantage of little guys, but little guys not understanding the problems of corporates and how to overcome them, to mutual advantage. Big guys need little guys to come up with ideas - and little guys not only need to protect their intellectual property before they approach the big players, so they have something to sell, but also must have a firm grasp of which company they should to go to, how that business operates and exactly who to approach within the organisation. Once, large companies did most of their research and development in-house. But as Mike Addison, R&D section head of Procter and Gamble, explains not much came out of the other end. That had to change.