A breakout for British invention?

Trevor Baylis, never short of inventions or ways of marketing them, has invented a new approach to protect intellectual property and encourage commercial thinking by inventors. His BBcs, or Baylis Breakout centres, would combine the functions of advice with establishing and dating copyright. He put the idea forward at the launch of a new book, ‘How to invent (almost) anything’, itself a radical approach, written by former HP creativity and quality manager, David Straker and psychologist Graham Rawlinson. Baylis explained that the centres would take the form of meeting rooms, equipped with date stamping video recording equipment used for police interviews. Present would be the inventor, their best friend or partner, a patent lawyer and an advisor. He spoke of the particular usefulness of “that wicked combination tool – the lawyer accountant”. The centres would be situated in universities, schools and business centres of unimpeachable repute. “There is an invention in all of us,” he expounded. “We have to celebrate innovation and tech invention at school. If you can teach art, you can teach invention.” However, since invention of commercially viable products is not taught at school, Baylis believes that inventors need to be able to learn it somewhere else. And, even more importantly, inventors and would-be inventors need to be taught about protecting their intellectual property and drawing up business plans – two other subjects which could also be usefully taught at schools. Since formal academic classes on the subjects would doubtless result in dry, stultified and sleep provoking presentations, he proposes the breakout centres as a means of providing maximum practical workshop-style education in short time scales in an intellectual property protected environment. The minimum end goal of such a breakout, he believes, would be the setting up of a “virtual company” an idea coined by entrepreneur David Nicholas, also present at the book launch. Since many of these centres would be in universities, which would hopefully get involved with some of the inventions, Baylis proposed that graduates should be styled, “Bachelors of Invention”, and that successful postgraduates who had succeeded in business should come back as visiting fellows to assist others’ start down the same path. He commented: “I now have so many honorary degrees it is obscene, but none of them mean very much.” On the other hand, a bachelor of invention degree, he believed, should only be granted to somebody who had demonstrated commercial competence as a budding and innovative entrepreneur. Such a qualification should really mean something to the world outside, especially investing financial institutions. Intellectual property protection can be kick started in the early stages of any project by using the ‘Innovation Logbook’ produced on behalf of the DTI and the Patent Office. To order copies of this essential publication, go to logbook's website. 'How to invent (almost) anything’ is available from Spiro Press, a division of Capita Business Services, priced £49.95. Much of the thinking is based on Triz, invented by former Russian naval patent officer, Genrich Altshuller, whose thinking also underlies Invention Machine software. "Quote:"There is an invention in all of us. We have to celebrate innovation and tech invention at school. If you can teach art, you can teach invention. I now have so many honorary degrees it is obscene, but none of them means very much. Trevor Baylis