Best Inventions of 2011

Your Invention Guru is a most happy man.  I received my advanced copy of Time magazine’s November 28^th“Invention Issue.”  Everything stopped at the office.  My doors went shut.  It was just me and my “Invention Issue” with a Hummingbird Drone on the cover that only the Department of Defense could love.

Before heading into a list of the top 50 inventions for the year, there is a very interesting keynote article on page 56 written by Lev Grossman entitled “Reinventing The Inventor.”  As Grossman correctly points out, “In the age of Steve Jobs, it’s all about perfecting the final product.”

Being first with a new product is not nearly as important as making the product the best it can be.  The hyphenated words are more critical than ever: cost-effective and user-friendly.  Jobs wasn’t necessarily first with his revolutionary inventions.  In fact, he might not have been that creative of an inventor at all.  But what he did do was perfect the Personal Computer, iPod, iPhone, iPad and Digital Movie Animation.  He knew what we wanted, and how we wanted it, before we knew that we wanted it at all.

To prove Lev Grossman’s assumption that first to invent isn’t as important as best to invent, let’s take a look at some of Jobs’ most famous inventions.

• Radio Shack with hundreds of retail stores across the country beat the Apple II to the market back in 1977.
• Kane Kramer, a British engineer, was the inventor of the first digital music player in 1979, some 22 years before the iPod.
• IBM introduced the first smartphone called Simon 15 years before the iPhone hit the market.
• Alan Kay’s tablet computer was featured in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 classic motion picture “2001: A Space Odyssey” some 42 years before Jobs gave birth to the iPad.
• And it was Charles Csuri’s 1965 film about a hummingbird that was the first digitally animated movie and not Pixar’s 1995 Academy Award nominated Toy Story.

All this is proof that when it comes to inventing, it is good to be first, but it is far better to be best.

For all you inventors out there, including my own clients, do not despair if you failed to make the Top 50 list.  Reviews of Time’s lists of past top inventions have not proven to be a guarantee for future riches and fame.  Curiously, Steve Jobs never made the Time’s Top 50, although he did pretty well for himself.

Time’s 2011 List of the 50 Top Inventions has something for all us.  In a few years, we’ll know if there are any hall of famers in the 2011 invention class.  Rather than bore you with a recap of Time’s list which you can easily read for yourself.  Take a look and pick your own favorite invention.  The list of inventions that Time put together this year is outstanding, but if I had to choose just one favorite, my choice would be DRACO, a new drug being developed by MIT that promises to eliminate the Common Cold.

To read more:  http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2029497,00.html