Change is Risk; Inventors are Individuals
The state of Ohio is struggling out of a rusty bucket. At one time, the Dayton-Cincinnati corridor was the world’s tool and die center. The pioneer in radio shows; the world’s most powerful AM radio. P&G fostered marketing research and still remains the world’s largest spender on advertising.
Today, Cincinnati, Ohio fetes Dr. Albert Sabin’s development of the polio vaccine. Among the area’s notable inventions is George Rieveschl’s enduring Benadryl.
Where will the new Sabins and Rieveschls come from?
Several years ago, a British company licensed a pediatric dialysis technology that was just gathering dust at Cincinnati Children’s hospital. Its technical significance: tighter control of physical and chemical fluctuations in the newborn’s smaller blood supply.
Here’s the irony. As Children’s took the plaudits, the laid off inventor remained jobless. No judgment intended: the dissolution of the development program was a larger business redirection.
Boss Kettering of Dayton
It would be an interesting case study to examine how Ohio lost its chance at information technology. Zoom in on how NCR (Dayton, OH) pioneered business machines, microfiche and carbonless paper. It championed the unix platform; it pioneered in bank atm technologies. Dayton also saw the earliest developments of the bar code. It is the site for the Air Force’s technology center, WPAFB. The corridor to Columbus had information pioneers Compuserve and the OCLC. A generation ago, Montgomery county had the largest number of patents in the country.
Michael Porter’s development strategy theories would not imply that we could legislate innovative venturing: rather, cities can only put clustering factors in place, to grow or draw innovators.
Inventors are individuals; ventures are risks.
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