Not every company welcomes outside submissions. Many companies do not want to see anything from independent inventors. The Not Invented Here (N.I.H.) Syndrome is very much alive and well in American industry. It is an established management pathology.

Consider Apple, for instance. The company makes no bones about not wanting to see outside submissions. On its website it warns, in part:

This notice notwithstanding, I know people who have had audiences to show product to Apple’s senior management. Clearly this harsh warning is to wave off the great unwashed. If you have the “know who,” you will be seen. And obviously, this policy does not refer to iPhone apps, which Apple encourages.

Companies have many reasons for this situation. A lot of the resistance comes from selfish self-interests. “If you have a 100-person R&D department spending millions of dollars a year and a lone inventor comes along with a better idea, it makes it harder to justify your department to your boss,” Michael Odza, publisher of Technology Access Report, told The Wall Street Journal. Woody Freelander, a former director of marketing and licensing at Union Carbide Corporation, has another take on the problem. He feels that if a corporation reviews and then rejects a submission, it opens itself for potential lawsuits if the company ever does something akin to the submission, even if what it does is not influenced by the submission. He adds that being so careful “may insulate corporations from lawsuits, but it also insulates them from great ideas.”

Some companies are N.I.H. only in select areas and are open to ideas in others. On its website, IBM states particular areas it does not want inventors to address. IBM will not consider the following submission types because they are impractical to evaluate:

Nonetheless, in my experience, if you have a trusted relationship with a power in senior management, companies are always open to hearing about opportunities to make more money. “Do Not Enter” signs are really to protect the company from uninvited submissions.

For many years, World Book paid no attention to my proposals for a line of educational learning aides under its trademark. Then one of my closest friends became publisher of the encyclopedia. I resurfaced the idea, and he said, “Go do it.”

When I come into an N.I.H. environment and I have no powerful advocate inside, I find a connection or I go elsewhere. It is the company’s loss. There are too many potential licensees for me to waste time on people or companies that don’t want to see me or appreciate the potential of the business opportunities in my bag.