What Inspires Leisure Time Invention?

This paper seeks to understand the intriguing but only sparsely explored phenomenon of “leisure time invention,” where the main underlying idea for the new product or process occurs when the inventor is away from the workplace. We add to previous research by focussing on the inventive creativity of the individual researcher, and reassessing the image of researchers inventing during unpaid time – who have often been dispatched as “hobbyists”. Based on the responses from a survey of over 3,000 German inventors, we tested hypotheses on the conditions under which leisure time invention is likely to arise. Results suggest that the incidence of leisure time invention is positively related to exposure to a variety of knowledge inputs – but, surprisingly, not to the quality of prior inventive output. Leisure time inventions are more frequently observed in conceptual-based technologies than in science-based technologies, in smaller R&D projects, and in externally financed R&D projects

A Renormalization group approach for highly anisotropic 2D Fermion systems: application to coupled Hubbard chains

I apply a two-step density-matrix renormalization group method to the anisotropic two-dimensional Hubbard model. As a prelude to this study, I compare the numerical results to the exact one for the tight-binding model. I find a ground-state energy which agrees with the exact value up to four digits for systems as large as $24 \times 25$. I then apply the method to the interacting case. I find that for strong Hubbard interaction, the ground-state is dominated by magnetic correlations. These correlations are robust even in the presence of strong frustration. Interchain pair tunneling is negligible in the singlet and triplet channels and it is not enhanced by frustration. For weak Hubbard couplings, interchain non-local singlet pair tunneling is enhanced and magnetic correlations are strongly reduced. This suggests a possible superconductive ground state.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figures, expanded version of cond-mat/060856

What Inspires Leisure Time Invention?

This paper seeks to understand the intriguing but only sparsely explored phenomenon of “leisure time invention,” where the main underlying idea for the new product or process occurs when the inventor is away from the workplace. We add to previous research by focussing on the inventive creativity of the individual researcher, and reassessing the image of researchers inventing during unpaid time – who have often been dispatched as “hobbyists”. Based on the responses from a survey of over 3,000 German inventors, we tested hypotheses on the conditions under which leisure time invention is likely to arise. Results suggest that the incidence of leisure time invention is positively related to exposure to a variety of knowledge inputs – but, surprisingly, not to the quality of prior inventive output. Leisure time inventions are more frequently observed in conceptual-based technologies than in science-based technologies, in smaller R&D projects, and in externally financed R&D projects.Leisure Time; Inventiveness; Organizational Creativity

Say It with Music

I have elsewhere suggested that judges, when applying (and therefore interpreting) statutory or other legal rules, may be compared with musical performers when playing (and therefore interpreting) musical compositions; that, perforce, judges, like musical performers, are to some extent creative artists. That comparison invites another, a comparison between criticism of the products of fine artists and criticism of judicial decisions. Such a discussion may seem to some persons to support the Englishman C. K. Allen\u27s characterization of the ideas of some American lawyers as jazz jurisprudence. But I shall risk such name calling. For, even in England, jazz has influenced serious musical composers; I and an English musical critic, after stating that we must realize that the human mind reacts against the acceptance of new ideas, goes on to say: When Monteverdi, over three hundred years ago published the System of Discords, the whole host of critics took up arms against him. Yet in time his theories became current practice, and were included in even the most academic text-books of composition . . . These styles and developments have been absorbed into our musical vocabulary until by now they are meaningless conventionalities. As composers 9trive to penetrate unexplored fields of musical interpretation, they invariably encounter this conservative reaction against the unfamiliar

Judicial Fact-Finding and Psychology

Lawyers and judges must constantly act as psychologists or psychiatrists. The lawyer in his office often serves as an amateur psychiatrist to his clients. Our legal vocabulary shows that courts cope daily with such psychological matters, as, for instance, motive, intention, malice, mental cruelty, delusions and undue influence