The State of Innovation
For 200 years, West Virginia has been an innovative state, from the invention of polyvinyl chloride, to the creation of soda glass, to the invention of the first glass bottle-making machine, to the development of cable television, to the creation of polyethylene, to the first lead-free ceramics, to the world’s strongest steel, to the nation’s longest steel arch bridge, to the blue-dyed cotton that became blue jeans, to the first corrosion-resistant alloys and the invention of plastic bags and modern antifreeze. The list could go on and on.
The wealth and good jobs created in West Virginia and across the United States have been built through innovation and manufacturing.
States and countries that stop innovating lose their standard of living.
In fact, those countries with the highest standard of living need to innovate more to compete with those countries that perform non-innovative labor at substantially lower costs.
Over the past few decades, thousands of research and development jobs have been lost in West Virginia. In Weirton, National Steel employed 250 researchers through the 1980s. Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel’s research facility employed almost 50 at its peak. Union Carbide’s Charleston research and development campus once employed 2,500 people. Many old businesses such as Hobbs, Brockunier & Company, a glass company, and J.L. Stifel and Sons, a textile business, had research facilities in West Virginia more than 100 years ago.
As a result of this loss of research jobs, our manufacturers have innovated less and jobs have become fewer.
In addition, the West Virginia culture turned away from entrepreneurship. During the Industrial Revolution, glass factories and ferrous and non-ferrous foundries were established, as well as cigar factories, ceramics factories and many more. Parts of West Virginia became so advanced that they looked much like an early Silicon Valley.
But as the labor/management issues of the middle of the 20th century progressed, entrepreneurship in West Virginia became tarnished and our innovation slowed.
At the same time, other countries began to manufacture, and recently they have begun to innovate. For example, China just passed Japan as the world’s second largest investor in R&D.
Today, 50 percent of U.S. patents are granted to companies outside the United States.
Back to the Future
We’ve always known the keys to economic success. We were all taught about Henry Ford and his cars, Thomas Edison and his light bulb, phonograph and motion picture camera and Charles Goodyear, who first vulcanized rubber. We well understand the economic impact of these innovations. But what of Jerry Merryman, James Van Tassel and Jack St. Clair Kilby, who invented the hand-held electronic calculator at Texas Instruments in the 1970s, or Dr. Martin Cooper, inventor of the cell phone? The United States no longer recognizes and values innovators in the same way.
We get what we celebrate
As a country and as a state, we celebrate “celebrity.” Americans are far more likely to know Paris Hilton than the inventor of the personal computer or the calculator or the insulin pump.
This issue was highlighted recently when I was at a meeting of the Industrial Research Institute, the country’s premier R&D management organization, where Paul D. Trokhan, the inventor of Bounty paper towels and Charmin bathroom tissue was given an achievement award. His invention of the first three-dimensional paper structure has led to over a billion dollars per year of sales of products for Procter and Gamble. An R&D manager from Korea leaned over to me and asked if it would be covered on CNN that night. Sad to say, it wouldn’t even make a local paper. In Korea, it would have been a lead story.
West Virginia is a state full of potential. It is full of ideas. I know this because of the many inventors who contact me at Touchstone.
We must head “Back to the Future” to build the economy we want.
And we do see signs of progress all over. Recently, we’ve seen MATRIC in South Charleston, whose innovations have spun out 7 companies in 5 years, already employing 130 people, and our company, Touchstone Research Laboratory, which is currently spinning out two high technology manufacturing businesses and has many more technologies in the technology pipeline. And we have been seeing the emergence of West Virginia University fueling the economics of its region.
And we see the West Virginia High Technology Consortium Foundation, whose 200 member companies employ thousands of people in high-tech companies. In fact, since the formation of the foundation, along with the building of the FBI and NASA facilities, the number of information technology jobs has risen to more than 8,000 in Northern West Virginia.
You can make a difference
You don’t have to work for a big company, have a lot of money or have a Ph.D. in physics to invent the next big thing. You do have to have passion, energy, and that “failure is not an option” attitude.
So, if you have an idea for an invention, then what?
Want a monopoly?
The U.S. government will grant you a monopoly for 20 years if you publish your invention. It’s called a patent.
Here’s the deal. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, companies started to hide their technology. It was thought that if the innovative companies kept everything secret that progress would happen very slowly. The compromise was this: If a company would completely explain a new innovation in such detail that others could completely understand how it worked, then the federal government would give that company a 20-year monopoly for that technology.
As an example, in the early 1950s, Nelson E. Cook and Samuel L. Norteman of Wheeling Steel Corporation invented hot dipped galvanizing of steel. This corrosion-resistant steel was inexpensive and quick to produce. Wheeling Steel was granted a patent in 1953. It built a plant that for years had no competitors and still operates in Martins Ferry, Ohio. Wheeling Steel also made money by granting licenses for this patent to other companies around the world – receiving far more money just from the licenses than the $150,000 of R&D that Wheeling Steel originally spent.
The Future is the Past
West Virginia has long been a place of innovation. It’s time for us to dig deep, pull on our imaginations, celebrate invention and entrepreneurship and invent the future we want for West Virginia.
Brian E. Joseph is president & COO of Touchstone Research Laboratory, Ltd., located in Wheeling. The firm is a four-time recipient of the R&D 100 Award from R&D Magazine and has been featured twice on the cover of Inc. Magazine’s 500 Fastest-Growing U.S. Companies issue.
