From: Robert Jacobson <cyberoid@stein3.u.washington.edu>
Subject: PHIL:  Not Invented Here
Organization: University of Washington


NOT INVENTED HERE
 
Almost every small laboratory and developer, commercial or university,
has had the too common experience of a larger organization coming to
visit, checking out the best new ideas --and then taking them away, to
develop itself.  Almost invariably, these ideas are then partially
implemented and fail, or left to languish in some backwater R&D unit
which becomes an excuse for the bigger organization not to do business
with the smaller.  The result is usually financial jeopardy for the
lab or developer, which never gets the support or business it needs to
continue, and a mangled example of "VR" that discourages executives at
the larger organization from further involvement.
 
This is one of the dirty little secrets of our virtual worlds
industry.  Everyone lives by it.  How many demo's are given with the
developers thinking, "Here goes another good idea out the door"?
Plenty.  We in the community do it because we're hungry for
recognition and it just might work out: the visit might just produce
the business we need to survive and keep inventing.  Unfortunately,
our wishful thinking perpetuates this exploitation.  When will we
learn?
 
At every convention and get-together inventors and designers share sad
tales of good ideas being lifted and wheels being reinvented, only to
produce the results described above.
 
There's no easy solution to this problem.  Big organizations have
lived off of the creativity of smaller labs and companies for
generations: it's the industrial way.  In Japan, this harvesting has
been formalized.  The _keiretsen,_ the dominant industrial combines,
regularly subject their suppliers to onerous terms and take the best
products for themselves.  This practice, however, is also common in
North America and Europe; only the institutions differ.  Big companies
and governmental agencies, secure in their financial resources, can
delay commitments to smaller entities while they adapt the good ideas
to their own purposes and then market them as proprietary products.
Ironically, the small fry then may have to pay a premium to get back
in product form the ideas that they they themselves originated.
 
This is not to say that the smaller labs and developers don't have
advocates within the big organizations.  In fact, it's one of the joys
of this business to meet the courageous individuals who try to pave
the way for mutual success, recognizing that the larger organizations
cannot indefinitely feed off the imperiled schools of innovators.
Often, they share the fate of those they champion, becoming
marginalized by their employers for political or strategic reasons.
Then all they can do is offer sympathy.
 
Also, we need to acknowledge the support of the few big firms and
agencies that do support labs and developers by providing funding and
buying the products and services that the labs and developers want to
supply.  We know who they are and they have our deep thanks.
 
As 1994 approaches, the year (we hope) of the "killer app," it's time
to more seriously consider our naivity in the business world.  Perhaps
we might bind together and, for a moment, submerge our egos and meager
competitive advantages to establish a common understanding of what's
really going on.

Probably, in the industrial system that has structured business life
for the last 200 years, major changes are going to prove impossible.
But raising the awareness of small labs' and developers' dependence on
good-faith patronage by our larger supporters and buyers can't hurt.
At the least, a few more labs and developers will do more than just
survive, so that they can correctly implement their good ideas, to
everyone's benefit.  And, with sufficient good will on the larger
entities' part, thriving multi-level collaborations will become the
rule.  Then the virtual worlds industry will become the energetic
economic player we all want it to be.