Good morning, good afternoon, good evening.

Welcome to our Academy of Technology call this afternoon.

This is one of the unique events in our calendar when we bring together some of the world's greatest inventive brains to talk about how to innovate.

The Academy of Technology is an IBM organization that has within it 700 of IBM's great technical brains including all of our Fellows and half of IBM's Distinguished Engineers.

It's a unique pleasure as the President of the IBM Academy of Technology to introduce the panel today.

We have four superb specialists in the field.

First one we have is Lisa DeLuca, say hello Lisa.

Lisa is on mute.

Lisa is going to be our moderator today.

She an IBM Distinguished Engineer, she's the Director of Offerings Management for the Internet of Things in our Watson division and she's bringing to market at the moment a new enterprise offering called Internet of Things building insights which is all around digital twins and exciting stuff like that.

Lisa's got a Master's in Science and Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon.

Then we got Elaine.

So Elaine is a veteran of startups, she's a product strategy and innovation guru who basically brought number of high tech products to market but currently she's the Founder and Managing Director of Concept Spring and she works with corporates to create new organizations of processes for new ventures that basically operate like startups.

And in her spare time clearly she's a senior lecturer at the MIT School of Management and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship.

So welcome Elaine, thank you for joining us.

Next we've got Florence.

Florence Lu is a Senior Solution Architect and a Master Inventor for IBM working in our Research division.

She's developed a whole range of stuff at IBM over the last 15 years ranging from Enterprise Social Solutions to Healthcare Analytics.

She has been granted multiple patents, including one for an IoT-based capability to detect disease symptoms earlier than currently possible for things like Parkinson's disease or skin and drug disorders so welcome Florence.

And finally last but certainly not least we've got Rick Hamilton on the line.

Rick is an Optum Senior Distinguished Engineer.

He's got expertise in a whole wide range of things from cloud, IT blockchain, machine learning, you name it.

He's by the way the most prolific inventor in IBM history that is at least until Lisa catches him.

He now works across United Health Groups strategic imperatives which includes using emerging technologies to help people live healthier lives and to make healthcare work basically better.

Before that Rick was IBM's Cloud Innovation Leader for Watson IoT division and where we was doing lots of interesting stuff around learning systems.

So that's our panel.

Hello panel and we put this event together with Michael Feder from AAAS-Lemelson as a regular event.

Michael's now going to introduce himself and the program and what we're trying to achieve today.

Michael, over to you.

Thank you so much Richard.

It's really a pleasure to be here on the AoT webinar with the full community from IBM and our partners who are also listening in from outside of the IBM sphere.

I'm here with my colleague Neela White who has been with the program longer than I and has really helped the program flourish over its five years.

You know AAAS is the largest professional science association and the publisher of the Science Family of Journal.

Our mission is really to advance science, engineering and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people and one way we seek to accomplish this mission is by partnering with the Lemelson foundation to manage the Invention Ambassadors Program.

The Invention Ambassadors Program is designed to showcase the human face of

invention in order to inspire, inform and influence thought leaders and global communities.

During each of the last five years we've identified 40 high-profile inventors working to address societal problems and these individuals are also passionate about spreading the word of the importance of invention in the 21st century.

What we do is we provide our investors with the training and opportunities needed to speak to diverse audiences about aspects of the invention ecosystems that they are most passionate about and we provide a whole host of programs that they can participate in during their program year but also beyond that year.

In fact we strive to have our program participants be invention ambassadors for life and we're thrilled to have four of our invention ambassadors participating in the event today including Lisa and our panelists and also to have a fifth ambassador, Aaron Baughman, being able to help us out in arranging this event and ensuring that this partnership with IBM continues to exist.

So I just really wanted to say again that I appreciate the opportunity to provide a brief overview of the program and to partner with IBM and please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about AAAS or the program.

And so with that what I'd love to do is get it over to the interesting part of the conversation and shift it over to Lisa for your moderation.

Thanks Michael thanks Neela.

You guys should definitely reach out reach out to the IBMers that are part of the Lemelson Invention Ambassadors Program and ask them about getting involved.

It's such a cool program, it gave me an opportunity to expand beyond IBM, help with that external eminence, reach out to the local groups and just talk about invention and share my story so learn more about that program for sure.

Someone share a link.

Share a link and go read more.

Richard already did a really good job of introducing our panelists so I'm just going to go through each one and highlight some of my favorite things from their bios and then hand it over to them to talk a little bit more about what they do and how they got into inventing.

So first up we have Elaine and you know I think the standout number for me is 22 she holds 22 patents which is my lucky number is so awesome accomplishments there and she's also a professor for corporate entrepreneurship at MIT.

So Elaine why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself.

OK so first of all I have to say it's hard to run around feeling good about myself with you and Rick and Florence.

What Rick is like at about a 1000 so 22 is nothing.

So let me start by saying I'm not a real academic.

I have deep geek roots and what I really am is product geek and a recovering robotics.

So today I'm going to start us off by talking about the business of invention.

Chiefly how did you think about a pipeline in which type of ideas and inventions come in one hand and then products that generate business value and solve customer problems come out of the other end.

I'm going to tell you a story about dental restorations - crowns and bridges to be exact.

Years ago I ran an engineering team at a company called SensAble Technologies where we created a set of patented technologies around the idea of providing people with a sense of touch while they sculpt on virtual clay.

So this is a sensible phantom happy device the locals serve here and the idea is that you know there's a package that you can sculpt on virtual play and create products.

One of the products that we created using that set of technologies was essentially dental that was applied to a dental lab for technicians to be able to sculpt virtually dental restorations and it was quite revolutionary at the time because everyone was carving effects and our customers were able to do this all additional.

Years go by, company is acquired, we all went our separate ways.

Something like 13 years after I left the company I walked into a dental lab on business and lo and behold there was a room full of SensAble dental systems and the technicians were gushing about how the restorations fit really well.

Then I felt like a million bucks.

Now we had a lot other patents that didn't go anyplace.

What was special about this set of patents? What did we do differently in this one case that made it last 15 years? I think it comes down to two things in that side of contact.

First of all we obsessed about the customers needs and wants, we brought our engineers our inventors in to this field, we spent hours watching technicians make dental restorations using wax.

And that insight really help them focus their energy into solving technical problems in the context of the work flow and that puzzle solved the right problems for the company.

The second thing is team.

We have a very cross functional team with every kind of engineers, designers and business experts and that diversity of viewpoint really really helped us out.

You know making the right decision.

Now one could say OK that's really interesting as a start-up we felt like what 70 people.

Most companies aren't that.

We have swim lane, we have processes, we're optimized to do things that generate revenue.

We can't do the new product development the same way we can not be honest.

Which my response is yes and yes you need structure, you need process, you need to optimize.

And there are things companies that are committed to innovation and invention can do structurally from an organizational design standpoint from processes standpoint to help inventors succeed.

There is a different story about an internal sales AI tool that was invented by a fellow who's friends call him the idea generator.

This was as a big size of enterprises level company and since the idea generator came up with an idea that where he thought he can train an AI algorithm on customer interaction data to help sales team sell more product and make more revenue.

Idea seemed to catch for a while until two things happened.

First of all there was an innovation group in the company that put up an idea of crowdsourcing competition and he wanted to apply.

In order to apply he needed a team.

So the second thing happened he attracted two more engineers and a product person and a product manager to join his team.

Now as a team of five they submit and they made very rapid progress.

They got internal customers to test their prototypes and long story short within a year they had deployed it worldwide in one business unit and that business unit made two millions dollars of extra revenue that was not in the pipeline before this team met.

So what are the similarities and differences between the product story and the

corporate story.

From the product development standpoint the same two things outstand - they were very close to the customers and they had a great cross-functional team.

But from the company standpoint there were a few things that this company did that helped the inventor succeed.

First there was an innovation group who put out these idea of competition you know platforms they also ran an accelerator and provided funding and mentorship.

Secondly there was a 30% policy in place where every employee was able to take some of their workday and work on side projects like that.

Between those two things this team was able to take an idea and fast-track it to an internal product that gave real business value.

What we're finding from our research is generally if a company is really dedicated to invention you can tell from the org chart.

All you gotta do is go to the org chart and look for an innovation growth typically a small growth either at the corporate level or positional and business unit level or there might be kind of a dedicated R&D function like IBM Research because as much as moderation that you can do inside the pipeline you need input in terms of ideas and invention and you need a structure beneath a growth and you need inventors to do that.

Very excited to hear from Rick, Florence and also Lisa on how it really works in your work.

Thank you Elaine and I don't think it's always about quantity its quality and I love how you're taking your inventions and bringing them to life right it's not just a patent that you're seeing it through the whole go to market strategy so I love that and it's something I'm passionate about at IBM as well, so cool I'm excited to hear your answer to all the fun questions we have coming up.

Alright next up we have Florence.

Florence I've gotten to know really well since she became part of the Invention Ambassador Program and I've been a co-inventor with her on a couple inventions and one thing I really like and admire from her is she's solving problems to really create a better world which I know it what this panel is supposed to be about.

to be about So why don't I hand it over to Florence and you can tell us a little bit about yourself.

Thanks Lisa, hi everyone I'm very honored to be here to present to IBM Academy of Technology and AAAS-Lemelson joint event because I'm an IBMer and also I'm the AAAS-Lemelson Invention Ambassador.

I created my very first patent when I was on my maternity leave, it's called a public speaking self-evaluation tool.

Before I had kids I use to attend the Toastmaster meeting in the evenings so I can actually practice my presentations there.

After I had kids I don't have such free time anymore so I created this invention to be able to help myself and anybody who wants to practice their speech on their own and this particular invention can provide instant feedback on people's tone of voice and hand gestures, facial expressions, the eye gaze with the audience, things like that.

At one time this way everybody can practice their speech on their own.

This comes in very handy I'm sure for everybody.

And I also believe that invention and the inclusion comes hand in hand.

Before I joined IBM Research I was the accessibility architect for IBM Connections product.

Every time when we do web product I truly believe we want to make sure everybody can use our product.

Talking about accessibility I have a very interesting story to share here.

Several years ago when I went back to China to visit I needed to find a particular bank in a newly built financial district.

I was pleasantly surprised to see some of the street map in their district actually has proved real.

At the same time I recognize the challenges of using those street maps.

I had to actually take a photo of the street map myself just to find my destination.

I can imagine how challenging it is for a person to depend on real to get such information and reach to their destination safely so I created systems that can actually download the information to a persons smartphone using both text and audio format.

This way anybody can navigate to their destination safely.

I've been very devoted to the STEM education myself and when I attended the orientation program in Washington, DC last year I found out that there is a AAAS-Lemelson-MIT event program and I happen to talk to the representative from that particular program.

As I came back to Boston I reach out to the high school in my local community.

I was able to establish an event team successfully and the team has been working very hard in the past few months to build a working prototype and gladly I was able to apply the IBM community grant for this team so they can buy the necessary materials to build their prototype.

And in the past few years I've been able to develop a methodology called smart methodology which stands for see, meditate, articulate, research and tackel and I truly believe that everybody can patent and all you require is curious mind and the willingness to learn and some dedication to drive from beginning to the end to submit the invention disclosures.

And everybody can constantly observe the challenges around them and you just need to think through what are the possible novel solutions you can come up with and conduct research to make sure your invention is novel.

When you write out your disclosure document you want to make sure that you can clearly articulate what's a challenge you want to solve and what is your solution.

This is the best way to attack all the challenges around us.

And we have a very diversified program within IBM to support inventing activities for who I'm the co-chair for IBM Worldwide Women Inventors Community.

And as matter of fact our very first speaker to our community was Lisa and IBM Academy of Technology has created such great platform for all the inventors to collaborate together.

The AAAS-Lemelson Invention Ambassadors Program have enabled different inventors to reach out to the general public to help people understand the importance of inventions.

It is because we want to create a better world together through invention.

Once again I'm very honored to be here to present, thank you very much.

Thanks Florence and if you are an IBMer, we need to post a link to that women inventors community because you should definitely follow up and listen to all the great events that they have going on there.

All right last but not least Rick, he doesn't really need an introduction right.

He's left IBM.

Everyone still whispers your name through the halls of the legacy you've left as an inventor at IBM.

In fact there's a wiki page called the most prolific inventors.

Everyone should look it up.

I just checked right before this meeting and he's eight away from Thomas Edison.

So Rick I'm hoping you'll surpass him and if you don't you know we're going to help you out on our end as well, but why do you tell us a little about yourself.

Well I appreciate that Lisa and first of all I have to say thank you for the time today it was wonderful just looking through the participants list and seeing Facebook friends, former co-inventors, former co-workers.

Now so I feel like I've come back home to family.

So I did have 24 years at IBM and in the course of that time to date I have 940 issued US patents.

Now for the last two and a half years I've been with Optum, the technology and services arm of United Health Group and I'm having a fantastic time basically responsible for an invention program really transforming our culture to focus more on invention and innovation so it's an exciting time to be working now for the sixth largest company in America.

But today I want to talk a little bit about the fact that we all recognize and that is that our companies, our society needs more inventors,we need more innovators and so there's a simple question and that question is are there things that we can do to become more innovative more inventive in our daily lives? And I'm here to give you some good news it's really really easy to become more innovative.

All you have to do is three simple things and today I'm going to take you through those three in seven minutes no less.

Number one, you need to build your foundation.

Here's the reality is that all invention is a mash-up it's a remix of ideas that have been used before in different context and in order for us to have inventive ideas we have to have this broad foundation of knowledge.

It's about transforming these known innovations to new ends.

You need to grasp as much as you can every minute of the day and I would argue that success as an inventor depends less upon whether you have a bachelor's or a masters or a PhD then it does the way you spend your time tonight, what videos you watch this weekend, what articles you read next week.

That's the most important thing.

In the US we have an incredibly fertile environment for building this foundation as well.

We live in a society where people of all different views and perspectives are around us and we just tap into those views and perspectives as well.

I was traveling for IBM back in 2013.

I was in Southwestern China in Kunming in Yunnan Province and I finished speaking to a group and it was about that the third question that was asked of me and it was a very simple question it was Mr.

Hamilton why are Americans so innovative? And I talked about our access to capital, I talked about a wonderful higher education system, I talked about a culture that tolerates failure as long as we learn from that failure and grow from the experience but I also had to say is because of our rich diversity as well because anytime you are surrounded by people who view the world differently than yourself then you're surrounded by new problem statements, new ways of viewing those problems and new ways to solve them.

So as we build our foundation don't just listen to people that look like you and sound like you but take in input from many different people.

So that's step one.

Step two to become more innovative is to look critically at existing solutions because within every product, within every service, within every idea is the seeds of its own destruction and it's very easy when you see a new solution to say simply ah that's wonderful but the innovators are the ones who will find that flaw that thing that people will be complaining about in a few years.

Let me give you an example.

I'm an electrical engineer and I went into engineering because of my love of audio and my love of music as a teenager and if I use an audio example back 45-50 years ago the only way to take music on the road was an eight-track tape -- a big large format tape and some people no doubt said oh this is wonderful we can now take music on the road.

But the innovators said there's problems with this - the sound quality is not good, you get a break in the music.

And those innovators created the cassette tape and people said oh this is the future of music but the innovator said there's still problems - the tape will stretch, the sound quality degrades those innovators created the compact discs, and many people including young me said ah we've seen the future of music.

But the innovators said well there's still a problem because these discs take up room and they get scratched and why be limited to those discs in your file cabinet.

And those innovators commercialized and popularize the mp3 players and people said all we've seen the future in music but the true innovator said there's still a problem because you are limited to the files on your computer.

And so those innovators came up with streaming services, the future of music, but now you're limited to the music that you already know.

So today's innovators are creating sufficient machine learning algorithms to teach you your new favorite artist before you even know them.

So the point here is every step of the way it's very easy to say ah this is wonderful but the innovator will say this is wonderful, how does it work and what are the weaknesses in this.

What will people be complaining about in the future.

So again step one build your foundation, step two look critically at existing solutions.

Step three is the simplest I'll talk least about and that is taking action and you can decide what the action is whether it's building a business whether it's building a business within a larger corporation, within an umbrella like Optum or IBM.

But look I have good friends already in their late 40s who look around and say I could have been this, I could have been that and they talk about what they could have done.

I feel badly for these people, you know you don't want to be one of these folks.

Life is short, take action, whatever an action you have within your capabilities.

I'm going to frankly go to my easy chair in old age and look back at the litany of failures that I've had over the years but I'm also going to have a trail of success and the only way you can find those trail of successes is frankly to always take action.

So three simple steps - one build your foundation, two look critically at existing solutions, three take action.

And now because you recognize that all innovation is a mash-up or a remix I would urge each and every one of you to take that message remix it mash it up take the good parts add your own elements and make that message your own.

So Lisa that's my message to you and back to you.

Awesome thanks Rick.

All right we're going to open it up for questions and I see some questions already rolling into the Q&A session and in the WebEx so keep them coming but Rick I have a question, you started us off talking about diversity and how important it is for having that diversity of thought to be innovative and to come up with new ideas but the USPTO just had a report earlier this year that said only 4% of patents had a female only inventor listed in the last decade.

So I want to open up to the panelist and get your thoughts on why is this and what is this problem, why is this a problem, is it a problem and what can we do to fix it? So

open to anybody who wants to take the first stab.

Well speaking as the sole male panelist I will take the first stab at this.

I think it is a problem and think it's a cultural inertia that we have had particularly around STEM and so I take my hat off to you Lisa as well as to Elaine and Florence and others who are breaking this mold.

The reality is that again as I said we need different perspectives, we need different viewpoints and we get those viewpoints when we tap into different ethnicities, all genders, all backgrounds to find new solutions and so I believe it's incumbent upon any large company to try to shift this mold and begin to try to open up the world of invention for people of all backgrounds.

All right I'm going to jump in here this is Elaine, of course it's a problem because I'm outside who doesn't look like Rick so of course it's a problem it's all Ricks fault because he has 940.

No, seriously I think the problem is plain and its just a bad business situation for everyone to look the same when they work on something together because what happens is they're going to agree too much with each other and you're going to have a great time doing this project and you're going to make all sorts of wrong decisions and there's nobody with a different viewpoint to challenge what you're thinking.

So it is a problem, what can we do? I think you know sitting at MIT looking at our teams we think about inclusion as much as diversity.

Diversity is good but then you know the real important thing is how do you get people who don't look like the prototypical inventor actually contribute and participate.

So from our standpoint, from a programming standpoint we are very very conscious about going into communities that typically are underrepresented in innovation entrepreneurship and we just make sure that we have good representations as role models for people to look at.

From a personal standpoint pretty much if any female group wants me to go talk to a bunch of female students at any age from elementary on I will talk right no matter how busy I am.

I feel like we're called as people who aren't or necessarily the prototypical inventors to show that there are people who look like them.

I think that's really important.

So I want to provide my input here, I agree this is a problem at the same time I want to echo what Rick mentioned a moment ago - people don't have to wait and complain saying there's no opportunity to invent.

There are many many opportunities out there for us to invent.

My family traveled to four different countries within two weeks at the beginning the summer.

Every where we go I always observe that you know how does their transportation system works you know, how does their ticket counter work you know, I always take photos everywhere I go.

I want to see how their ATMs designed, how their subway ticket machine works and I want to make sure that everybody can actually use it without even learning the local language.

And there are so many challenges out there and if we want to make sure that people who have disability to actually use the public transportation system or any other services is that possible to do as of today and again there's so many you know opportunities for us to invent.

I'm very thankful that actually within IBM we have all different types of programs to support inventors and that's why we are able to be in the leading role for 26 years in the US Patent office and initial patent record.

So for example IBM Academy of Technology has this Jumpstart program to support a new hires inventions and I have been leading different patent brainstorm sessions, patent learning sessions and I created you know the have lunch with a master inventor program and we even had a patent ice cream social.

So keep your options open, you know keep collaborating there's so many opportunities out there that you can collaborate with people from different professions and the background and the world is out there and you just need to capture opportunity to invent.

Thank You.

Yeah, you know I agree with you I think that I haven't met a single person that didn't have a great idea.

You know people stop me all the time because they know that I have patents and they're saying oh I have this awesome business idea like how do I patent it? And we're really lucky at a big corporation like IBM because we're exposed to that process of inventing right and we're encouraged to submit our ideas through our system but I'm curious, Elaine and Rick, you know I know Rick you're helping to build an inventor population within Optum which is a large company but they didn't have as many inventors as IBM.

What is that process like of trying to encourage that ecosystem and then Elaine to you as you know more of the entrepreneurial side how do you convince these people to take that idea and convert it into a patent and you know sometimes that's the money out of their own pocket? So both of you - Rick over you first.

OK well the short answer is I'm having the time of my life and tremendous fun now at Optum and you're right it is a matter of transforming our culture and teaching people how to invent.

There's a lot of things here that could go into this if you had three hours I could fill the next three hours of stories but I don't want to put everybody to sleep here.

I would say there are three broad elements to it.

One is getting out there and training people and working with people to make sure that our technical and product workforce understand what the opportunity is and recognizes how to spot an inventive possibilities.

Secondly it's partnering with senior leadership across the company to make sure that our efforts are really tied with strategic priorities.

So for instance we're investing heavily in machine learning in genomics in IoT even in blockchain and other areas as well, all to again improve patient outcomes and so we need to make sure that we're not off you know spending money on things that are not related to our strategic priorities.

So again it's partnering with senior leaders.

The third thing is the really boring part but it's also very important and that is to work through all the processes.

It's about streamlining funding mechanisms, it's about making sure we have linkages into the right programs and processes across the company and ensuring that this becomes part of our DNA, part of who we are as a company.

I'm very proud without giving too many details here, very proud to say that we've had tremendous success over the last two years and we've really I believe started turning the aircraft carrier that is Optum and United Health group.

As I put it to our CIO recently the good news bad news situation is I believe if I were hit by a bus tomorrow the transformation that we've unleashed continues.

So I'm very proud of that impact that we've had but I'm still watching out for those buses.

OK so the question is like how to encourage potential investors to put potential inventors to actually invent and file patents and go into an entrepreneurial path.

First of all I think that you know a couple of different scenarios right, scenario number one at MIT we have students - students where there are a lot of students who just are overflowing with ideas some of them don't have the confidence.

You know they say well what I'm trained in mechanical engineering.

I have an AI idea not really my specialty.

I can't do this.

Well basically the best we can do as educators is just convince them well you don't need to have like a degree in something in order to invent something that solves your problem.

The best inventions come when the inventor themselves really kind of personally ever experienced a problem and they want to solve that problem and then they have a lot of focus.

So a lot of times we just need to convince them it's just take action what Rick said just go do it, just so start right.

Now in terms of just patenting there I saw a question about how much money it costs to prosecute a patent all the way through.

If you're talking to a student who is you know taken out like a loan and others funds for college and you tell them you need to patent it out of your own pocket.

Well I think that there's some reality check that we need to do and that's a very very practical consideration - do they really have the money to pursue a patent they really come as an undergrad student.

There are many many options you know as an entrepreneur outside of the corporate context to pursue that and they might actually need to go to an entrepreneurial pathway and made some money.

In the thought of a big company I think that IBM often really illustrates how to create an ecosystem where you know invention is you know a full-time job of a lot of people and then the patent and the pursuing of patents is a normal way of doing that.

Right, so if there's an infrastructure in place that encourages people to invent and then your inventions get patented and that's just a normal way of doing business well that's one way.

The other way the company can go do things like before I mentioned earlier in story idea crowdsourcing to accumulate ordinary employees who are not necessarily in a full-time inventor job to solve problems they see and I see that in a lot of companies from software enterprise companies to food and beverage companies.

I saw that and the coca-cola bottler.

So that's a way of democratizing the process of inventing and problem solving to people who may see a lot of more problems than they see solutions for and then they can be potentially the people with the best students to solve that problem.

Awesome, thank you and I was just doing a quick google search because there are

possibilities to file as a micro entity right so if you are just an individual on your own it's not as expensive to do the fees where it gets expensive is when you have a lawyer involved so everyone's allowed to be what we call a pro se inventor so you could go on Google patents and read some other patents and you'll find very quickly that it really is a template.

There's a certain section that you need and it's not that hard to go and create your own patent.

I've done it a few times.

So if you're worried about the money don't use that as an excuse, you can try out the process, get some feedback and talk to some examiners and it's really fun a great learning experience - so go do that.

Let's see if there's a bunch of other questions that have come in one of them said they want to hear more about the action side from invention forward so creating something after a new concept is created and invented.

I think this is more for the IBM side so I'll pass over to you Florence.

We do have a lot of inventions that don't necessarily make it into products so what are you doing personally to get those inventions into the products or any advice for some IBM inventors or other corporate inventors on how they get their product idea getting innovation.

Yeah sure so one thing that you know I've been doing is that after I file the patent I actually go to talk to our offering management team to see whether you know they can actually put these inventions into the featured device on test line and we also had the internal hackathons that I was able to present some of my invention through the internal hackathons to you know gets it back from our executive team to see you know whether those dimensions can be prioritized into the product.

Thank you.

Very cool, yeah it's pretty much is up to the inventor to go talk to the product teams at this point and I'm launching a new solution around digital twin and happen to invent the about 20 patents on that so it really depends on you and where you are and how confident you are in inventing around your day job and whether or not gets into your product.

It's much harder to convince someone else to take your idea.

We are working on a cool project as an internship project if you are an IBMer reach out to me and I'll tell you all about it - find me on Slack and then I'll tell you how we're trying to connect those inventors to the product team.

All right more and more questions are coming in.

Let's go over to Elaine - how should inventor better pick and define problems to solve? Right so I think first and foremost well it depends whether you actually want to go all the way through to create a product and venture.

For that what we see is that really the people who go the fastest are the people who solve problems they really really are passionate about.

Right so an inventor can be very prolific in a lot of different areas but if you have a specific problem you've experienced in your life and you're caught on fire about solving it then you're going to be much more kind of focused in terms of solving that problem and you're going to be much more authentic and inviting other people to join you in that.

So I think you have to really really care about it.

Coming back to this process of getting ideas all the way through to product and especially in the corporate context right and I also saw one of the questions that means a lot more investors come in than there are products.

I think if this goal really is to produce products at the other end you must know two things.

First of all why is your company in business? You must know that at the most deepest level you need to understand what is the company's strategy and where is it kind of go.

That's context for you to blend to the second thing which is align what you're doing, what problems you're solving with the important things that's important to the company.

The issue with any ideas, every idea is a good idea if you look at it in isolation because generally the inventor has a good understanding of the problem and then they can come up with solution but in the context of the company itself and all the different things that company need to solve.

How central is that, how aligned is that to the company's core mission and I think that means like if you're able to really understand the company's strategy and also align what you're doing with the strategy then probably is much better in terms of your technology to be relevant to some future product never going through the rapid process.

There was a question that came in about inventing alone and people coming up with ideas but wanting to almost validate with a group.

What are your all's opinion on inventing as a group and of your patent portfolios how many are you a sole and better on versus part of a larger team? Well we have to weigh in on this because immediately after this call I've got to go train a whole bunch of young people on the invention process and I'll be talking about this in 20 minutes anyway.

I think you're going to know my answer to this already.

I urge people to collaborate as inventors and we do this for several reasons right.

First of all we like to collaborate because you've got a network of smart people around you and to the degree that you can leverage this smart network around you you're going to go much further much faster.

So if I go to a Elaine and say hey Elaine what do you think of my idea and she looks at it and she says hey Rick it looks pretty good but you can add this and make it better.

Guess what just happened I'm happier because my invention is stronger, Elaine is happy because two minutes ago she wasn't an inventor but now she is and our mutual employer is happier because now we have a stronger idea and so leveraging each other's strengths is very important.

Additionally when we're focused on the patent process as opposed to creating say marketable innovations per se it allows the disclosure to move forward, the patent application to move forward with everybody taking a share of the work.

There's the old adage many hands make for light work and so when you collaborate among many people.

Maybe I did the first draft of a disclosure, Lisa does the second draft, Elaine does the defense before the review board and Florence works with outside counsel.

So we all achieve success with just a small amount of work.

So sometimes these teams will arise organically through your project teams that you work with on a daily basis other times you seek out your smart friends that have skills complimenting your idea.

Elaine let's hear from you I know you both have an answer to this one.

What Rick said.

That's my answer.

Of course you want to see him you know if you do things by yourself you're limited to what's in your brain and you know no matter how smart you are the synergy with talking to people with different backgrounds is always best.

Yeah you know me personally I take inventorship really really personally right you don't want your invention to be disqualified or nulled if there's an inventor listed that didn't actually contribute so there's ways to do it you can ensure that someone's not just coming with the problem but also being a co inventor and you feel strongly that they are contributing to at least one of the claims that's written.

They changed the way IBM file patents, it used to be alphabetical order by last name and now it's actually an ordered inventor list so you can be a first name to the manner more like how publications work and that's taken me a step back with who I include on inventions - I don't know why but I like OK I want to be the first name no matter.

So I do think me personally I've been inventing with other people a little less which I agree is not as you know it doesn't lead to as many patents and it doesn't lead to necessarily strong ones in those cases where you're not an expert.

But something to think about because that was one of the findings from the USPTO is if it's a woman only type of inventor invention so I think about that like OK so I want to help those stats so I'm going to submit as a single inventor.

And then also are those first named inventors on some of those patents are being tracked by the USPTO.

So I am thinking about it but I do agree that you know more minds are better than one.

How about you, Florence, any thoughts there.

Yeah I totally agree what have been said you know it's very helpful to collaborate with people from different job professions and given different organizations and you'll be amazed to see you know what other people know and how intelligent everybody is.

Together working as a team you can really create you know very solid results and I also want to mention that in order to actually get solid result it's very useful to actually have somebody drive the process and make sure that you know the team all contribute and you know that will get the team some very good results.

Thank you.

Someone asked a follow on question to my being a pro se inventor and as an IBMer where you still get sign-off from IBM and any corporation that you work on.

So make sure at IBM follow the disclaimer title.

So you just talk to an IP law professional and all and say now I don't think this is part of my you know day job or something that's aligned with IBM business and then they'll give you or grant you that disclaimer of title so don't go patenting ideas and say Lisa said it was OK unless you talk to that attorney.

All right we had another question that came in about I'm not really sure how that what they're asking here what they say regarding the period after an inventor has filed successfully for a patent what happens when an inventor wishes to use within IBM the invention he filed - for example call for code of competition.

I think it's more of a question about from public disclosure how long you have to file but they did say it was a filed patent.

Right anyone want to take a stab at answering that one.

OK I would say the answer is the same at IBM as it is in Optum especially after 24 years at IBM.

You know the end result the end goal is not patent into itself the end goal for both our companies are creating solutions that change people's lives that make you know B2B transactions B2C transactions, whatever the case is easier and better and so if you have the opportunity to use innovation whether or not it's patented that is the end goal.

So we need to always keep that in mind.

It's about moving the needle for the people that depend on us and for the shareholders in IBM's case as well.

So I would say if you have the chance to deploy something definitely use it and the patent just gives you extra protection.

That's a follow on in a softball.

What do you first as an inventor should you first take that product to market and then work on the product later if you don't have the money to file now? What should you do? When should you patent ? OK can I chime in on that.

OK so I am quite opinionated on what kinds of things I'd like to patent because historically being an entrepreneur I never ever had money.

Right which is quite different from your situation so when you have to kind of decide which patents deserve to go through you think about if it's central to my mission, do I need it in order to protect my right to practice.

Right so what I did not want is go all the way through product development and put it out to market and then have great success.

And then Lisa you go and file and get a patent on the same thing and then you send me lawyer's letter to say well you need to stop selling that because you're infringing on my patent.

Right so if you're kind of really building a new venture and you need to protect your ability to keep doing business well that's when you want to be very measured about doing the patent work up front.

There's one exception there which is software patents.

So when I ran engineering for Rethink Robotics which was the Robotic startup.

We had a lot of things which you can take apart the product and figure out mostly how it works.

Those are the things we had a big patent portfolio on.

There's also a lot things that nobody can figure out how it works which is in the software specifically we had vision you know computer vision segmentation software.

You know we were using a 2d camera to see the boundaries around things and no one can figure out how it works by looking at our product.

For those we actually elected to keep the software algorithms as trade secrets for a couple of reasons.

First of all it saves money, secondly and much more importantly I'm not putting out a disclosure to teach people how to copy my product because it's very very easy to work around a software patent.

So you know generally in a resource-constrained situation such as a constrained situation anything that can be taken apart and figured out I'd like to kind of be very upfront and strategic about pursuing a solid patent coverage for that.

For the software algorithms I tend to pull back a little bit and keep certain things a trade secret.

To me in the especially on the scenario situation the patent process is a business tool right it's not kind of it you know we're using it in order to help us do something.

So we're kind of therefore not really so eager to teach someone else how to put us out of business.

Yeah I think the short answer is if you're at a company that supports innovation like IBM you should err on the side of filing or submitting a patent before you go talking about it externally just in case and if it comes down to money like Elaine said you just got to think about your business needs and prioritize.

Yep cool all right I see a couple more comments coming in questions.

I want to remind everyone that you can ask questions if you have something for the panelists please add it in the Q&A we've got a couple minutes left.

All right so someone asked in line with Rick's comment today - I have an idea to enhance and make a solution better.

The question I have can non-IBM ideas be submitted through the IBM channel or do we need to submit on our own? Florence, what do you think? I think that in general is better to consult with IP counsel but in general IBM actually published the patent portfolio folks every year and we usually try to align our inventions with those patent portfolio focus area.

This is Rick, I agree with those comments about consulting with your legal

professionals on that.

Typically and unless things have changed in the last two years since I left, IBM likes to maintain sole ownership of intellectual property.

There were counter examples in the past for instance when IBM had a joint partnership with Motorola back in the 90's.

They jointly owned some patents.

But the challenge becomes that it's very difficult to use intellectual property over the course of the lifetime of the patent if there is joint ownership and so IBM typically only owns basically intellectual property created by its employees, its consultants, its contractors, etc.

But again if you have questions consult your legal professional.

Awesome, we have time for one more.

Darrell asks what happens if you get sued if another patent services that you may have infringed on.

You want to talk about freedom of action or should I? Go for it.

OK let's suppose Lisa and I, my old friend Lisa and I, are competitors and one day Lisa knocks on my door and says Rick I noticed that solution you just released I have a patent that covers key elements of this.

Well what do I do.

I slam the door in our face, I chase her off my lawn - no offense Lisa and then I go back and I pull my engineers and attorneys together into a room.

Because the reality is we do not assess the landscape of all possible competitive patents when we put new solutions out there.

But this is the reason why big companies build portfolios it's about this concept called freedom of action also known as freedom to operate and what I want to be able to do is go back to Lisa three months from now and say OK Lisa we'll talk about my solution in your patent but we're also going to talk about these two solutions of yours and these three patents of mine that read on your solutions.

Because if I have the ability to that I have established what IBM calls freedom of action what most others is called freedom to operate.

In this scenario we simply sign a cross license agreement and we do business in the marketplace.

That's why when you look at companies like Microsoft, at Google, at Apple and Amazon

each of these companies last year had more than 2000 issued patents.

It's not because they are necessarily trying to monetize their portfolio, it's because they recognize the value of freedom of action and the ability to do business in the marketplace which is where we all want to be.

I want to add a little color on how it looks to get that letter sent to you yourself.

So I was running engineering for Essential Technologies listed the haptic stay and we get a cease and desist from Immersion Cooperation years and years ago saying you are reading on this path.

So fortunately in that case there was a rather liberal reading of their patent and we actually did not.

So we concocted a technical and legal response and we send them a longer letter via our lawyer to say so actually we don't but oh and by the way these claims that you have are actually not quite valid because this is a prior art that we have known for like a million years and then nothing happened.

So in real life people do this all the time but the reality is most of the time you're not really reading on someone else's patent, you can generally work around it and secondly like Rick said you can arrive at business arrangement.

We had the same company had another company approach us to want to license our patents because they knew they were going to read on our six or seven very similar patents on a certain area of technology.

So we do a deal everyone's happy and they pay us our money and they have the right to use it.

So again to me the patent process and the output those are business tools and we can do so strategically to build businesses.

Awesome well that's all the time we have for today I could ask you guys questions all day but I know you have to get back to your day job.

So I'm going to pass it over to Richard to close us out.

Thank you Lisa, Elaine, Florence, Rick thank you very much that was absolutely brilliant.

That was probably the fastest hour I've had for quite some time.

Actually very lively, very entertaining, very engaging, very very good indeed.

So what have I learned.

Well first of all the power of an open mind that and the finding faults with things is no

longer bad and when you do make change happen and that's what this call was about was hoping to inspire people to get out there and invent whether you're inside IBM or outside of IBM it doesn't matter and as Lisa said you know if you're outside of IBM you know you can learn how to pattern by reading patents and engaging in the process without necessarily expensive lawyers and everything else.

So really thank you very much for all your time today.

Thank you to Aaron, Theresa, and Michael for organizing the whole session and well I hope you have a wonderful rest of day.

Thank you for your time!