The individual inventor and the role of entrepreneurship : A survey of the Canadian evidence

The findings of the present study on the individual inventor in Canada are based on a survey conducted by mail in the summer of 1986. This survey elicited responses from 374 inventors to whom Canada had issued 352 patents in 1978 and 1983. The purpose of this article is to report the results of this survey which was conducted to gain better knowledge of the nature of the inventive process; to examine the main sociodemographic characteristics of individual inventors, and, above all, to discover the fate of their inventions. The article pays particular attention to the role of the individual inventor as innovator and entrepreneur.