
More Older Adults Are Becoming Inventors - yitchelle
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/18/your-money/more-older-adults-are-becoming-inventors.html
======
applecore
Even ten years later, it's always fun to see the submarine[1] breaching the
surface on Hacker News.

[1]:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

~~~
rfrey
Thanks! My critical filters were a bit clogged.

Edison Nation you reckon?

~~~
srtjstjsj
6 mentions in a short article! This was native advertising. Shame on NYT.

~~~
morgante
It's not native advertising, it's just regular PR. No money changed hands.

------
rgbrenner
How can you have an article that claims an increase ("more ...") in the title,
but then doesn't actually say what the increase was, or even that it was
measured at all.

Older people have decades of experience & knowledge. Of course they invent
things nytimes. This is not a story.

------
edgall
_But inventing does not guarantee a golden payday. Only 2 to 3 percent of all
inventors make any money from their inventions, experts said._

Key point. It takes more than just an idea to bring an invention to market.
Most inventions never get to market for the simple reason their inventors lack
the business acumen and don't get the right people involved.

After inventing something the _only_ thing you need to worry about is finding
investors, patenting, finding a business person, finding a manufacturer,
prototyping, safety testing, finding suppliers and coordinating it all so that
you can make a profit. Most people sadly try to do it all themselves, but it
takes a special kind of person to know _how_ to do it all themselves and get
it right the first time.

~~~
MichaelGG
Are you sure? Has there been a study done on inventions/patents to know how
many are that useful? For instance, if I come up with a, I dunno, a coffee
filter that's 2% more effective, sure I've invented something. But I might not
make any money ever because a 2% efficiency increase is irrelevant for non-
industrial-scale things, generally. (Or maybe that 2% gain costs 5% more.) So
maybe a lot of people are just inventing "stuff" that while technically an
invention, isn't really that useful, business acumen or not.

------
Everhusk
I think in general, More People Are Becoming Inventors. Shows like Shark Tank,
Dragons Den, etc. have made starting a startup (a.k.a inventing) a mainstream
thing to do, and it is (slowly) becoming more common.

~~~
codingdave
You may have your cause and effect mixed up. Reality TV follows society, it
doesn't create it.

I think the cultural drift towards self-fulfillment of your own destiny is due
to the societal move away from decades-long jobs. People no longer get a job
and work it for four decades, then retire. Our cultural outlook on work has
changed, as people constantly evaluate their current position and direction.
And that, in turn, drives people to try new things, which results in more
inventions and startups.

------
ChrisNorstrom
_Only 2 to 3 percent of all inventors make any money from their inventions_

Oh how true. How true. I invented ToDoCal, the large format todo list /
calender hybrid. My customers loved it. It sold like crap. I could never sell
more than 300 a year. It was on blogs, amazon, ebay, etsy, my own store. It
would not sell more than 300 units a year.

Loving a product and wanting a product are 2 different things.

~~~
megablast
Is it inventing if it isn't something new? Not sure what the inventing part of
your application are?

------
GizaDog
More Older? What does this mean?

~~~
elktea
More adults, who are older in age, are becoming inventors

------
sk5t
How could this article go on without discussing the issue of abysmal savings
interest rates, pushing more people into investing rather than watch their
savings dwindle in the bank?

~~~
boca
The article talks about inventing and not investing.

