About
A Working Session, Not a Webinar
Invention Cafe® is a Swanson Reed initiative built around free morning working sessions in the United States. It brings economists, inventors, university technology transfer offices and corporate IP leaders together with specialists to talk through innovation culture, productivity and commercialisation. The 2027 programme runs across Texas, and the same format is planned in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Singapore and New Zealand.
Innovation matters to every business, but the environment around it is constantly changing. Markets shift, new tools arrive, and the rules and programmes that support innovation change over time. Invention Cafe® gives businesses a practical space to understand these changes, share experiences, and work through the issues with others facing similar decisions.
You don’t need to be a specialist to benefit from a session. The workshops are written for four kinds of attendee: economists and economic strategists, independent inventors, university technology transfer offices, and corporate IP leaders.
What Makes It Different
- Small groups, not a lecture hall: everyone in the room gets to ask their own question.
- Real project questions, not generic slideware: attendees work through problems they actually have.
- Direct interaction with the specialists in the room, not just a presenter on a stage.
What We Mean by Each Theme
Three themes run through the United States programme. Here is what each one means, and what you get from a session built on it.
Innovation Culture
How a team treats ideas: who gets heard, what happens to a suggestion once it has been made, and whether people feel able to say what they really think. Culture is the pattern of ordinary behaviour, not the wording of a mission statement.
- A structured conversation built on the Cafe LATTE method: Listen, Ask, Trust, Timing and Evolve.
- Room to describe a real situation from your own organisation and hear how the others in the room read it.
- A short set of questions to take back to your own team.
Productivity
How much useful output you get from the effort you put in, whether you are looking at a team, a company or a national economy. It is about what to measure, where good work stalls and which change to make first.
- A way to set your own measures of output beside those used by people from other fields.
- A look at how patent production and economic growth relate, using the inventionINDEX created by Adam Rogers.
- Practical questions on removing friction between an idea and a first trial.
Commercialisation
Getting an invention out of the lab, the garage or the patent office and into a product, a licence or a new company. It covers choosing a route, finding the right partner and judging what the invention is worth to that partner.
- Inventors, university technology transfer offices and corporate IP leaders in the same conversation.
- A comparison of making it yourself, licensing it and spinning it out.
- Questions to settle before a first meeting with a possible licensing partner.
What You Get at Every Session
- A short briefing from Swanson Reed specialists, with guest speakers at selected sessions.
- A facilitated discussion in a small group, where you put your own question to the room.
- Two hours, 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM, free to attend.
- A route into the inventionINDEX collaboration, which gathers what attendees contribute into a submission on innovation policy.
Four Topics Behind the Themes
The themes are explored through four topics, each with its own page. The Café LATTE method below sets the structure for the discussion itself.
Patent Economics and National Prosperity
How the rate at which a country produces patents relates to its growth and productivity, and what that means for policy and investment.
Organisational Innovation Culture
The leadership, incentives and everyday habits that decide whether a team keeps generating ideas and acts on them.
Commercialisation and Licensing
Taking a patented invention to market, directly or through a licence, and finding the right counterparty for it.
University Tech Transfer and Spin-offs
How university research reaches industry, through technology transfer offices, licences and companies spun out of the lab.
The Café LATTE Method
The discussion part of every session follows a simple sequence. It is not a framework to memorise. It is just the order that tends to produce a useful conversation instead of a circular one.
- L
Listen
Collect views from inside and outside the organisation before deciding what to change.
- A
Ask
Recast a grievance as a question that points towards an opening.
- T
Trust
Show that speaking up has consequences, so honest input keeps arriving.
- T
Timing
Choose when and how fast to introduce a change, in steps the team and the market can take in.
- E
Evolve
Keep revising what works instead of resting on it, and plan for a product's whole life.
inventionINDEX & the Ideas That Come Out of the Room
The ideas and insights shared during each workshop continue beyond the session. They are brought together through inventionINDEX, an ongoing collaboration that gathers input from attendees across different cities and turns those insights into a submission focused on improving innovation policy and the incentives that support it.
About inventionINDEX Collaboration →Quick Answers
- What actually happens at an Invention Cafe® session?
- A short, practical briefing from Swanson Reed specialists, with guest speakers at selected sessions, followed by a facilitated discussion where attendees put their own questions about innovation culture, productivity and commercialisation. Sessions run from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM at every location, and attendance is free. They are deliberately small and conversation-led rather than lecture-style.
- Who is it for?
- Economists and economic strategists, independent inventors, university technology transfer offices, and corporate IP leaders. Sessions are small and conversation-led, so people from each of these groups can put their own questions.
- Is Invention Cafe® only in the United States?
- The United States programme is the core of the 2027 schedule, with 9 sessions across Texas. The same format is also planned in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Singapore and New Zealand.
- Who runs it?
- Invention Cafe® is an initiative of Swanson Reed, the programme's founding sponsor.
Ready to Find a Session?
See the full 2027 schedule and find a workshop near you.
Explore the 2027 Workshops