Britain’s Brilliant Ideas - the Dragons’ Den Effect

The Intellectual Property Office (formerly the Patent Office) reports that the proportion of patent applications from individuals - as opposed to companies - is rising, and they’re predicting it could be as high as 30% of the total for 2007. Ian Fletcher, chief executive of the Intellectual Property Office, describes the trend as a “Dragons’ Den effect”, inspired by the popular BBC series in which entrepreneurs compete for investment. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

It no longer seems so surprising that people with just an idea, and no experience in business, want to risk so much to turn their inspiration into reality. But the figures for patent applications show that the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />UK is enjoying an inventions boom: more and more people are starting out as inventors. There does seem to be a trend towards people realising that “ideas have value, and patenting those ideas is one of the ways an individual inventor can capture it.”

Many home-based inventors are just using ordinary consumer experiences and frustrations to dream up new products and services which they hope will earn them a fortune. In Britain’s Brilliant Ideas Boom - BBC Money Programme there’s the example of Bug Brush that has bristles all the way round - so there’s no ‘wrong end’ to go into the mouth. And the brush is bendy, to make it safer if toddlers fall over with it in their mouths. There’s a long and expensive haul for the young mum who came up with the idea: she’s already spent £12,000 on getting a prototype brush made and lawyers’ fees to file a patent application.

Big business leader Sir James Dyson has revolutionised the vacuum cleaner market, and owns a business valued at around £1bn. For him, according to the BBC, inventing is all about using engineering to find better ways of solving problems. He confirms that the route between idea and business is firmly through the patent system: “We file about a patent a day. It’s accelerating because we’ve got more and more research engineers. It’s the backbone of our business.”

Sadly, there’s nothing new in the observation that Britain is a nation fizzing with brilliant ideas and a world centre for excellent research and development. But an old problem remains – which poses a bigger challenge: innovation. This is the process by which terrific ideas are turned into winning goods and services. In this respect, Britain’s recent history has been less stellar – though perhaps even this is beginning to change