Thomas Edison famously patented 1,093 inventions in his 84 years. Charles Bombardier, on the other hand, is trying to invent something new every week – a pace that puts him on track to outdo Edison when he’s 60.
Bombardier, 41, is the grandson of Joseph-Armand Bombardier, creator from the snowmobile and founding father of Bombardier Inc., therefore it isn’t surprising that an entrepreneurial streak runs deep in his veins.
Even when Bombardier was working at his namesake company, he spent much of his free time thinking up ways to result in the world a better, more effective place.
The goal is to share my ideas, because I have a lot of them every week
By 2006, after working seven years as an engineer at Bombardier Recreational Products and another decade before that working various jobs in the family firm, Bombardier couldn’t resist the lure of entrepreneurship and decided to strike out on their own.
“My father wanted me to remain at BRP, however i make my very own decisions and I decided to take my chances,” Bombardier said. “I’ve always had this urge to behave great, probably because of my grandfather. And I’m more comfortable such as this, being on my very own, than employed in an atmosphere just like a corporation.”
After a few years doing different things in the transportation space, including a stint as Segway Inc.’s distributor for Canada, Bombardier decided the time had come to start sharing his seemingly infinite convenience of inventions using the world.
But, unlike Edison, Bombardier doesn’t patent his inventions because which goes against his principle of open innovation. He’s sharing his suggestions to make the most of them, and tries to publish at least one new idea per week on the website of Imaginactive, a Montreal-based non-profit he founded in 2013.
Imaginactive allows him to work with industrial designers to render his good flow of ideas. He funds the organization and pays his designers from his own pocket using income produced by previous ventures, such as the sale of vehicle dealerships he owned and writing a newspaper column.
“The goal is to share my ideas, because I have tons of them every week,” Bombardier said. “I’ve always felt bad about not being able to share them with people.”
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The range of ideas is breathtaking. With names reminiscent of comic characters, each invention includes a rendering and a short description of its purpose: Korbiyor, a driverless, multimedia hearse; Snackr, a 3D food printer for autonomous cars and mass transit; Metropolis, a police drone equipped with an amiable holographic avatar; Jacknife, a shape-shifting car; and Firesound, a flying saucer that may extinguish fires using low-frequency sound waves.
But it’s Antipode, a supersonic business jet, that’s been generating the most attention for Bombardier lately, with no wonder. His idea for a luxury business jet capable of reaching Mach 24, or 25,000 kilometres an hour or so, is almost 12 times faster than the Concorde.
In theory, what this means is passengers could fly from Ny to London in less than an hour or so.
The idea began as a different Bombardier invention known as the Skreemr, a plane design based on NASA’s scramjets, experimental unmanned aircraft designed to fly at hypersonic speeds. But the Skreemr didn’t address the problems of sonic boom and overheating that come from rapid acceleration.
After he published the Skreemr idea, Bombardier said an engineering firm that does work for NASA contacted him about a new concept referred to as long-penetration mode, which redirects airflow to help reduce heat, noise and vibration on hypersonic aircraft.
This prompted him to draft a completely new supersonic jet: the Antipode.
It sounds elaborate – the kind of thing engineers and scientists spend years focusing on – but Bombardier said hello didn’t take him very long whatsoever. “I didn’t spend seven years developing that concept; I spent per week developing that idea.”
He’s not trying to create real-world items that may i day be marketed towards the masses, but wants to obtain people referring to boundary-pushing concepts.
“I would like to understand what other people say,” he explained. “Is there a market for that? What do you think about this? Will it work? Can we design an electric train engine that would be able to perform that? The concept is to share it and get the feedback.”
This is the reason why Bombardier doesn’t bother patenting his ideas.
“I started patenting the first few ideas – but it took a lot effort and time to explain the technical invention and all of that, which i decided to no way and merely skip that part.”
Asked if he’s worried that someone will steal certainly one of his concepts and turn it into a money-maker, Bombardier said this is the whole idea.
“I’m working as an open innovator. I share my ideas freely with the world, therefore if anybody wants the concept, they can utilize it,” he explained. “If I don’t share it with anyone, the chances are it’s going to stay in my drawer for Ten years.”
Although it’s hard to tell if his ideas have directly inspired other inventors, he explained he’s seen products appear which are very similar to his inventions. For example, his Wingsurf concept, a flying wing that a rider can stand on – akin to a wakeboard on the horizon – is reflected within the Wingboard developed by Alabama-based Wyp Aviation.
Most individuals are lucky if they show up with one great invention in their lifetimes, but Bombardier said his ideas just arrived at him unprompted while he’s lying during sex or driving around or reading a magazine.
“It’s a wide open process,” he said. “I don’t sit and start to draft tips on a board; it just comes up.”
Ultimately, Bombardier’s goal is twofold: inspire the next generation of inventors while helping researchers show their ideas in a new light.
To that end, he is starting a PhD in mechanical engineering at Universit de Sherbrooke and will set up an innovation lab on campus to assist students turn their ideas into prototypes.
He has also published a magazine called Alpha that showcases 48 of his Imaginactive concepts, and that he intends to finish an updated version this season that he can give away for free to schoolchildren across the nation.
“By publishing my concepts I must inspire small children to pursue careers in engineering and perhaps entrepreneurship,” Bombardier said. “I’m trying to find the next Joseph-Armand Bombardier.”
