The romantic idea of the genius inventor never sat right with me. Now that idea has been torn down once and for all.

A very interesting article in the New Yorker featured Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures laboratory. When Myhrvold left Microsoft way back when, he gave himself the small task of inventing the invention. He invented an invention factory. Here's the idea. He brings together really smart people from various fields and asks them to brainstorm. Myhrvold apparently hoped that his invention company might file a hundred patents a year. They've averaged about 500 patents a year. And that's not to mention their backlog of three thousand ideas. They just licensed off a cluster of patents for 80 million dollars.