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Patented Success

IBM Master Inventor Dan Kolz Keeps the U.S. Patent Office Busy

To the delight of overworked patent examiners, Kolz doesn’t plan to keep up the pace of two-dozen inventions per year forever. He’d like to explore other aspects of life at IBM, perhaps in marketing or management. But he’s far from suffering from inventor’s fatigue. To the contrary, he actually finds the invention process less difficult as he gains experience and knowledge. “The more I learn about different areas of technology, the easier it gets to see how different elements can be combined into an invention,” Kolz says.

Kolz also has a responsibility to mentor his colleagues and bring them into the inventing process. He likes to work collaboratively with a few colleagues, each of whom will bring an interesting problem to the table. The team then bounces ideas off each other until the best problem-solution combination is found.

Kolz believes that most people can create inventions if they go about the process the right way. “There’s a set of steps I try to show people,” he explains. “Inventing is about looking at a problem, finding a solution—and then looking for the more interesting problem connected to that solution.”

It’s a never-ending process of innovation that has already benefited IBM’s customers and promises to add many more patent applications to Kolz’s portfolio.