'Make Invention Accessible'

This mantra drives Ben Kaufman and his successful startup Quirky, an online community of designers, makers, and enthusiasts to invent new consumer products and get them to market fast. A similar commitment to opening up innovation motivates us at GE, and we’re excited to partner with Quirky—we’re sharing hundreds of GE’s patents with Quirky’s inventors and challenging them to build applications we can’t dream of. We’re also asking them to create connected products that help us live smarter at home. (www.quirky.com/ge)

Realizing that we don’t have all the answers — that to solve big problems you need many perspectives and partners — is humbling but invigorating. Collaboration is a powerful force for progress and innovation. Even if you could have all the answers, why would you want to? People with different views and passions solve problems differently.

At GE, we’ve seen this firsthand by partnering with startups, researchers and others with great ideas who comes from less traditional paths. Working together in open challenges, for example, we’re tackling breakthroughs from smart grid technology to breast cancer detection. With Kaggle, an online community of more than 80,000 data scientists, we’ve found algorithms and predictive models that can help airlines navigate their planes more efficiently and hospitals make the patient experience more seamless. Sharing access to information, technology, expertise, scale and now patents—instead of hoarding them—can be the crucial instigator for creating something more.

Sure, there are issues to figure out—we can’t give away our best ideas for free. But the debate between open and proprietary needs to be less either or. There is a growing spectrum of ways to unlock value for more people. Openness marries speed to scale, with shared risk and reward. While inventors and their ideas also need to be protected to reward and incentivize innovation. That’s why we are so passionate about our shared vision with Quirky, of opening up patents to others and also keeping royalties intact.

At GE, we’re fortunate to have some of the world’s best inventors, who have created more than 30,000 patents. But we haven’t imagined all of the limitless ways they can bring new products and solutions to new markets quickly. We’re betting that a host of new Thomas Edisons–high school honor students, moonlighting engineers, hobbyists -- will use our breakthroughs in areas as diverse as optical systems, electronics and material coatings as launchpads. Take for example, dual cool jet technology we designed to cool electronics on jets, it will soon be cooling laptops and tablets. Opening up allows the same technology making flight more efficient to land in your pocket. Imagine what millions of people can think up next.

Photo: Quirky