Word: otisca
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...Otisca is not entirely a victim of others' shortsightedness and bad timing. Customers, investors and board members acknowledge that the company has made mistakes; its marketing has been less than sophisticated, and Smith and Keller probably should have moved the company closer to the mineheads and the factories likely to buy their fuel. Some board members questioned Smith's ability to run a corporation larger than an extended machine shop. "He thinks there's only one way to do things," says board member Speicher, "and that's his way." For a time, Otisca employed a marketing specialist, but to little...
...would hope that business would be more experimental and more flexible," says Sidney Wertimer, recently retired professor of economics at Hamilton College and an early investor in Otisca. "Sure, we've made mistakes. I think probably somewhere along the line Henry Ford and Thomas Watson made a mistake...
...that Otisca was born at the wrong time in the wrong place. Other technologies and energy sources may leapfrog over the concept of a precleaned coal slurry. In that case, the Jamesville plant, Doug Keller and Clay Smith will be a brief, forgotten chapter in American industrial and environmental history. That would not be atypical. Nine out of 10 inventors never see a penny from their ideas. Far fewer get to be Henry Fords or Thomas Watsons...
...there is something about the Otisca story that is more troubling than mere missed chances and bad timing. Statistically, Americans are not as inventive as they used to be. And foreigners are taking a greater share of U.S. patents -- up from less than 20% in 1963 to nearly half in recent years. In 1990 the top four American patent winners were Japanese companies. Innovation is also stifled by investment bankers and venture capitalists, who all too often view start-up companies not for the long-term potential of their new products but as products themselves to be sold quickly...
Smith's engine is already built. He and Keller just need someone to buy it and put it to use. That still just might happen someday, though Otisca's 20- year record does not support such optimism. But as Doug Keller says, "If you're not optimistic, you're out of the game...