I'm currently wrapping up work at a job I've held for the last 3 years as an engineer for a Research and Development department of a major research university in The States. My job involved taking breakthrough research from within the university, or from outside sources who approached us, and turning it into a useful product or process. Additionally I often worked with VCs and investors who wanted independent prototypes built using technology from companies they were looking at investing in, or were looking for technical review of potential investments. As the possibility of LENR being commercialized comes closer, I wanted to share some of the lessons I've learned regarding the potential pitfalls.
One of the biggest things I learned was that revolutionary technologies that could completely change the world are invented by the dozens every day. And that's only counting the tech that actually works. Out of these thousands of workable technologies developed every year %99.999 are dead on arrival. Usually, inventions die and are buried not for any technical reason, and not from conspiracies of global corporations but from any one of the thousands of financial, economic, legal, or just plain stupidity pitfalls. I've picked out the two most common issues I've seen below, supported with a real world example.
1) Inventor Arrogance and Greed: This is something I've seen time and time again; someone invents some new tech or process and suddenly they are the world's experts on it, never to be surpassed ever. No one could ever critique their work, or even possibly improve their system. This is usually accompanied by an obsessive desire to maintain super-majority control over their work. Now don't get me wrong, people deserve recognition, praise, and of course wealth for their contribution to society, and they are usually the first expert in it. But, don't go overboard. My first project in R&D involved a new type energy storage system that had fantastic energy density, great response time, and great efficiency. The project was terminated in the preliminary design stage despite perfect performance because: A) the inventor was insisting on outrageous ownership percentages and B) the engineering team couldn't touch "his baby." He wanted us to pay for everything, let him run the show, and have every engineer on the team do everything exactly how he wanted it done. That was enough for us to walk away from the project despite the fantastic benefits the technology promised. Just because you've done something amazing doesn't make you unique, people can and will walk away from the table no matter how good your tech is.
2) Paranoid Control over Intellectual Property: I think this one is best illustrated with an example first. A few months ago I initiated a project with an outfit that thought they had found a way to dramatically improve solar panel efficiency. We were being funded by the company to build an independent prototype to verify their work, which would then be shopped around to investors. We signed our contracts, drew up NDAs satisfactory to all parties and tried to get to work. Except we couldn't. Despite the NDAs, the penalties if we had broken them, and our long history as an institution of safeguarding IP, getting anything from these guys was like pulling teeth. Not even just critical information either, even performance data might as well have been classified top secret. After 3 months of trying to get what we needed to do the engineering on the prototype we terminated the contract. IP should be treated carefully if that's how you want to play it, you should work with honest people, maintain NDAs, have clear measures put in place to discourage violation of them, but once you're ready to work with someone and have your documents in place it's time to lay your cards down.
Another thing that I've learned, and that could shed some light on the Rossi-IH case, is that rich investors are all too often not that intelligent. This went against my previous beliefs, and probably many other peoples as well. If someone has managed to get rich, they're probably pretty smart. Alas, this is not the common case in my experience. All too often investors fail to perform their technical due diligence on a project before they sign over their funds. Once they are invested, they're resistant to any evidence that they've been taken or that their technology won't perform as expected, especially technical evidence in a field they don't understand.
Hopefully that was interesting or useful to someone. There's more I can come up with if there's the interest. My position on LENR right now is the same as my views of most potentially revolutionary technologies: an open heart and a skeptical mind. If it does work I certainly hope that it doesn't fail to due inexperience with commercialization, greed or stupidity or worse a "that can't happen to this" attitude.
