I don&#x27;t agree with the downvotes, but I disagree that inventing is any more dead now than it has ever been.  As far as I know, successful inventors have always needed the startup skillset.  If you look at historical inventors&#x27; stories, it is very rare to see the classical case of an inventor who builds a prototype, patents it, and the world then beats a path to their door.  Instead, typically an inventor will partner with someone who has more business skills than themselves and they develop a market for it together.  That sounds a lot like a startup to me.<p>Considering how the vast majority of patents end up protecting intellectual property which is worth nothing, the real barriers to professional inventing don&#x27;t seem to be in the patent arena, but in the business arena.  It has always been hard to sell an invention to a large company for commercialization.  At least today the option of making an invention-based startup which could then be acquired by a big corp provides a business path.  If there is a problem with that path, it is only that startup funding seems to focus on internet marketing more than actual invention these days.