Quote:
Originally Posted by JulianEdgar
Anyone can come up with ideas - and people very often do. I've had three this morning.
- I wonder if I put cabin outlet vents on the roof whether that would energise the boundary layer and reduce flow separation?
- I wonder if the sky is blue above my house today because someone is holding up a big blue sheet?
- I wonder if I pressurised the frame of my bicycle at say 100 psi whether I could run tubes with paper thin wall thickness?
My classic story of an idea is the probably apocryphal one of WWII. Someone wrote to the UK government saying they had an idea for finding all the German Wolfpack submarines in the Atlantic.
Yes, asked the government, what is your idea?
Oh, said the correspondent, we should just boil the ocean dry.
Ideas are ten a penny - like opinions. Everyone has them. Ideas alone are worthless.
I am also amazed how people have, and I can only describe it as the arrogance, to believe ideas they come up with are worthy of consideration... without their having done even an hour of research or any testing at all. For example, I would never, ever suggest how solar race teams could do better. They are so far ahead of anything I could come up with that it's just not funny. We've had a person in this group suggest that the head of Porsche aerodynamics knows little. He knows so much more than any of us about car aerodynamics that to think otherwise is to be completely deluded.
I am currently (ie this morning) working with a suspension expert as I write a book on the history of car suspension. He knows so much more than I do about suspension that, even if I spent every minute between now and when I die studying suspension, I could never catch up. So yes, I am indeed happy to be guided by experts suggesting ideas. And you can be sure that in every case, they will have plenty of evidence to support the ideas they suggest - otherwise, they wouldn't have suggested them.
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In the United States they are called U.S. PATENTS, for 17-years, just for coming up with a novel idea for a product or process, without ever testing anything.
The field of study, which is a requirement for the patent application, is a tip-off the the patent examiner, as to whether or not due diligence, and a thorough research of the appropriate patent fields have been undertaken by the applicant.
The Small Business Administration and Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration offers $ 425,000 ( US ) for ideas.
Check your premises.