Megaminds: Lessons From A Successful Inventor

Published on Monday, 08 November 2010 14:49

 By Kevin Milne

Following the release of his new book, MegaMinds: How to Create and Invent in the Age of Google, I spoke to Larry Kilham about his life as an inventor and the lessons we can learn from Megaminds.

The book explains how people do genius level thinking and how this can be augmented by the new Web-based search and invent services. In other words, nobody’s mind is a mind by itself.

First book

Before penning MegaMinds, Mr Kilham’s wrote his first book, Great Idea To A Great Company: Making Inventions Pay, which was essentially a blueprint to starting up your own successful business from the ground up.

Mr Kilham has a long history of inventing and has been advising businesses for more than forty years on the subject:

“When you have built a few start-up businesses and you have others in your family who have also done it, as it was in my case, then running a business is fairly straightforward.

“At one time or another I owned three small high tech companies, two of which ultimately depended on inventions.”

MegaMinds

Kilham’s new book describes the era of MegaMinds, which are individual minds networked together. These minds can be more powerful and more creative than any lone genius or any supercomputer.

This is a brain-computer partnership whose elements will be explained so that all readers can benefit.

“MegaMinds offers a comprehensive picture of how people do very creative thinking and how this can be augmented by the new computer clouds.

“I review the major thinkers such as Da Vinci, Edison and Einstein and then move on to the latest in computer-aided thinking".

“I then review artificial intelligence, highlight its limitations and then go on to explore the possibilities with Google and Web-based connected intelligence.”

The book is not all theoretical. Throughout MegaMinds Mr Kilham insists there are clear examples of the theory at work:

“Examples are drawn from a wide variety of applications ranging from inventing birdfeeders to complex jumbo aircraft design".

“I combine historical research, current laboratory studies using such modern techniques as fMRI, and my own experience as an inventor with several successful patents in complex technical areas.

“I offer pointers along the way for everyone from emerging inventors and technical problem solvers to research teams seeking to utilise the best in cognitive science and computer technology.”

The content of the book is described as being able to explain and highlight the changing ways in which research and thinking is conducted today, in a world of huge databases. Mr Kilham believes his book will shed light on this issue and said that it would be of particular interest:

“For those involved with huge data bases including companies, government agencies and research institutes who are tackling multi-multi variant problems such as drug discovery, climate change modelling, and public health modelling.”

The future

A new invention currently in the pipeline for Mr Kilham is a joint venture and is aimed at not only home safety, but personal safety, he said to me:

“I am working (with a partner) on a very low cost gas detector (such as for carbon monoxide) that can be incorporated into mobile smart phones.”