> ...any of the current big names in the market could take my tech and bring it to market...
They could. They probably won't. They've got their own projects in the pipeline, they probably won't be as fast as you think (the first Android phone came a full year after the first iPhone), if they're behemoths then they're probably pretty risk-adverse anyway, and typically actually revolutionary ideas are sneered at by the establishment. (A very specific one that comes to mind: Paul Baran's packet-switching network idea was mocked: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Baran#Selling_the_idea ) Stop worrying so much about imaginary competitors!
Or as Jessica Livingston wrote in the introduction to Founders at Work: "People like the idea of innovation in the abstract, but when you present them with any specific innovation, they tend to reject it because it doesn't fit with what they already know.
"Innovations seem inevitable in retrospect, but at the time it's an uphill battle. It's curious to think that the technology we take for granted now, like web-based email, was once dismissed as unpromising. As Howard Aiken said, "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.""
That depends upon the idea. If the innovation doesn't cannibalize their existing business, doesn't require some sort of paradigm shift that people are uncomfortable with and it offers benefits that are simple enough to understand then it will probably get copied instantly.
I believe his idea may fit this mold.
If an idea doesn't fit into this mold, then yeah, maybe he will have to shove it down people's throats. That still doesn't mean that he won't be beaten up by the industry behemoths' size and market distribution once they cotton on.
None of this means that patents will protect him, of course. Plus, he may get bludgeoned by the behemoths' patent portfolios as well as their market dominance.
They could. They probably won't. They've got their own projects in the pipeline, they probably won't be as fast as you think (the first Android phone came a full year after the first iPhone), if they're behemoths then they're probably pretty risk-adverse anyway, and typically actually revolutionary ideas are sneered at by the establishment. (A very specific one that comes to mind: Paul Baran's packet-switching network idea was mocked: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Baran#Selling_the_idea ) Stop worrying so much about imaginary competitors!
Or as Jessica Livingston wrote in the introduction to Founders at Work: "People like the idea of innovation in the abstract, but when you present them with any specific innovation, they tend to reject it because it doesn't fit with what they already know.
"Innovations seem inevitable in retrospect, but at the time it's an uphill battle. It's curious to think that the technology we take for granted now, like web-based email, was once dismissed as unpromising. As Howard Aiken said, "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.""