You need an inventor to make a discovery but also an innovator to develop it and turn it into a product

SCIENCE:DO YOU EVER wonder about the guy who invented the clothes peg? You probably don't, or if you do you wouldn't admit it, knowing people would start advising you to get a life. Those who have thought about it might conclude that guy is probably a millionaire now. Or what about the guy who dreamed up the intermittent windshield wiper? We know he is a millionaire because they made a movie about him a few years called Flash of Genius. He now gets royalties for his innovation.

It is almost enough to make you want to try your hand at inventing something, a little innovation that somehow becomes an essential part of our lives. Even if you only got 1c per sale, you would become a millionaire if it was as widely used as clothes pegs or wipers are.

To do that though, you would probably have to be two persons in one. There are plenty of good ideas around, any one of which could make €1 million. if the idea were developed.

To make it work, you have to be an innovator as well, you have to be able to see how a good idea can be improved and then delivered as an essential new product.

This is not radical thinking here. The inventor of the original spring-loaded mousetrap had a good idea but it was probably too clunky to catch anything.

Or maybe the inventor got the idea but never developed it and left it sitting on a shelf where no one had a chance to recognise its potential. And the original clothes peg probably didn’t look anything like the multi-coloured twisted plastic things we use today.

The New Yorkerrecently published a perfect example of this counterpoint, the difference between invention and subsequent innovation. It used Steve Jobs, the co-founder of computer manufacturer Apple, as an example of this. He made a visit to the hallowed halls of IBM's research labs and being a computer geek, he just couldn't miss the trip.

The story goes that he saw staff fiddling with a box attached by a wire to a computer screen. As the box moved, it made a cursor move across the screen, which in turn showed little drawings that represented different software options. The cursor could be moved to the drawing and the box also had a switch that could be clicked to make the programme start.

IBM’s people didn’t see much merit in the thing, but Jobs did. He hired a designer to improve the box and developed software to build a better mouse that subsequently had the world beat a path to his door.

Even if the story has grown over time, it illustrates how it isn’t enough to get a good idea. Someone has to take the idea and develop it. You need the creative inventor to make the discovery but also the creative innovator to see what it can be, develop it and turn it into a product.

Now imagine a scientist doing research in a laboratory, month after month, year after year trying to discover something new. Then in a eureka moment she does it, all her experiments click and she has made the big discovery.

The next thing is to tell people about it, which for scientists means getting it into a peer reviewed science journal.

In days gone by, that was it, job finished. There was no need to do anything more other than go back to the lab and pick up where she left off, the mousetrap left safe and sound on the shelf.

Things are different today however. Scientists are wholly aware of the inherent value that may be attached to a given discovery. Increased inclination to patent – if you can afford the ridiculous legal costs – now parallels the business of getting into a journal.

Some scientists are also now taking on the second role of developing an idea, becoming innovators who can see the commercial potential and want to develop it. But mainly this task must still come down to someone else becoming involved, an innovator who also understands what is needed to make a business work.

This leaves us with a major question. Are inventors and innovators communicating? Is there a way they can find one another to turn ideas into companies, jobs and wealth?

Then there is the question of money. Are there financiers who have the resources to back a company and help it?

Some argue we are coming up short on both fronts, but we can be confident that a discovery with a whiff of money coming from it will attract innovators to turn it into a product before very long.