4 ms·

I don't think you read the article. The conclusion is that ideas are cheap. The dude was the ideas man. When a company is seen as a bullshitting enterprise ho

• madair 17y ago
  Yes, I read the article a few times since it was released. A knowledgeable reader like you or I realizes the travesty of an organization of rich people sitting around dreaming up ideas so they can assign a team to document for patent. But you have to interpret the article to see that angle, because the extent of Malcolm Gladwell's interpretations are the problems of eponymous attribution and the message that "you can do it too", which comes off disingenuously: "The unavoidable first response to Myhrvold and his crew is to think of them as a kind of dream team, but, of course, the fact that they invent as prodigiously and effortlessly as they do is evidence that they are not a dream team at all. You could put together an Intellectual Ventures in Los Angeles, if you wanted to, and Chicago, and New York and Baltimore, and anywhere you could find enough imagination, a fresh set of eyes, and a room full of Varleys and Pfaffs." Yes, he's right, we can setup a patent mill too! (I know, that's not fair, he means that we could setup an invention workshop too, but that's not what we typically see I.V. as.) On the other hand, there's Dean Kamen. Now that's an invention workshop! Bravo!