The Individual Inventor and the Implications for Innovation and Entrepreneurship: A View from Wales

This paper investigates, through quantitative and qualitative analysis, inventive activity in the modern technological setting of Wales in the 21st century. The paper reports on the barriers, motivations and drivers to inventors becoming entrepreneurs in exploiting their ideas and taking them to market, and indicates the outcomes of a pilot phase of the Wales Inventors' Questionnaire (WIQ). The paper concludes by considering some of the barriers, motivations and drivers faced by the inventors – both those suggested by inventors themselves and those reported in the academic literature – and possible ways of overcoming difficulties. From the findings, it is proposed that there is more to the inventive process than the barriers, motivations and drivers observed and that personal characteristics may inhibit or inspire the individual inventor.