No more school of hard knocks?

Trevor Baylis is now putting his considerable determination behind the creation of a Royal Academy of Invention. His vision is for a place that will take the fear of humiliation out of inventing. He calls it “an extension of the inventor’s ego-zone”, where individuals can float their ideas in confidence. Most importantly, those inventors with ideas that have the most mileage could learn about commercialising their product, receiving advice about selling or licensing patented ideas and about getting the best deal from business. Baylis also plans to offer these selected inventions the benefit of paid-for consultancy from a professional designer, covering such preliminaries as presentation models, to help generate interest from companies. This way, he believes, the story of his radio may become less of a rare occurrence. He has received support in a House of Commons debate on invention and innovation. He has also taken up discussions with the Prince of Wales (DW 2 August). There’s no stopping him…