Why We Need More Inventors, Not Just Innovators
Every so often, a product appears that doesn’t just improve what came before—it obliterates the assumptions underlying the entire category. That was the feeling when Dyson unveiled its latest vacuum cleaner—sleek, nearly silent, radically efficient, and unlike anything else on the market. Not just a new version. A new vision. Watching it in action felt less like a product demo and more like watching the manifesto of an inventor. And it made me realize: in today’s startup-obsessed world, invention has become a forgotten art. Most entrepreneurs are not inventors. They are incrementalists. Smart. Agile. Opportunistic. They innovate—sure. But they rarely invent.
The Innovation Illusion
Let’s be honest. In the current startup ecosystem, “innovation” is often a euphemism for “repurposing.” A better checkout flow. A slicker subscription model. A gamified dashboard. These are clever ideas, often brilliantly executed. But they’re building on top of existing technologies, riding established consumer behaviors, tweaking known mechanics.
Subscribe to Startup Digest to stay ahead with the latest news, investments, and must-attend events.
That’s not invention. That’s iteration.
Uber didn’t invent GPS, smartphones, or transportation. It reassembled the parts in a novel way. Instagram didn’t invent photography. Stripe didn’t invent online payments. Even OpenAI didn’t invent neural networks—it just made them shockingly accessible. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Innovation powers markets, makes technology usable, and democratizes access. But invention moves the frontier.
The Case for Invention
James Dyson is a rare figure in modern business: an engineer first, a businessman second. He famously built 5,127 prototypes before he cracked the first bagless vacuum cleaner. He didn’t improve what existed. He rejected the core mechanism entirely. That decision—costly, obsessive, almost irrational—set the tone for everything Dyson has done since. Cyclonic separation. Airblade hand dryers. Blade-less fans. Hair styling tools that respect hair structure through airflow instead of heat. Each product embeds new science, not just new branding.
This isn’t about better marketing. It’s about altering the physics of how we interact with machines. Dyson’s vacuum doesn’t just clean better. It redefines what cleanliness means, how air moves through space, how motors behave at scale. It’s industrial design, engineering, and vision fused into form. In a world of pitch decks and growth hacks, that kind of obsession with first principles is almost alien.
Why Invention Is So Rare
There are reasons why so few entrepreneurs invent.
Time – Invention is slow. Markets hate slow. Founders chasing 18-month funding cycles don’t have the luxury of 5,127 prototypes.
Risk – Investors prefer traction over tinkering. A startup that reinvents user onboarding? That’s investable. A startup building a new micro-motor? That’s “hardware risk.”
Training – Many of today’s founders come from business or product management backgrounds—not deep engineering or scientific research. The muscle memory is in agile sprints, not laboratory failures.
Incentives – Patent systems are bureaucratic. Universities often own IP. And the public markets rarely reward deep R&D unless you’re already Apple, Tesla, or Google.
So we innovate, not invent. We iterate, not originate. We optimize what already exists. And we wonder why so few startups truly shake the foundations of their industries.
But What If We Chose Invention?
Imagine a startup ecosystem that funds the unreasonable, that values lab time as much as launch day. A world where building a better battery, not a better pitch deck, gets you a standing ovation. We’d see breakthroughs in material science, not just marketplace platforms. We’d see new energy sources, not new delivery models. We’d see health tech that heals, not just tracks. Invention is harder, yes. But it’s also lonelier, less glamorous, more misunderstood. It often takes a decade before anyone realizes how radical it truly was. But when it lands—when the new thing becomes the only thing—it resets the game. Dyson didn’t chase market share. He rewrote the rules of the market. That is the calling of a true inventor.
A Quiet Challenge
To every entrepreneur who feels something deeper than MVPs and exit multiples: What if you stopped optimizing and started originating?
Not just what can be done better. But what hasn’t been imagined yet.
We don’t need another social app. We need better air. Safer power. Smarter machines. Longer lives.
We need less hustle. More thinking. Less “go-to-market.” More go-to-lab.
Innovation is good. But invention is what moves humanity forward.
