THE BOMBARDIER CLAN’S UNKNOWN IDEAS MAN,
BOMBARDIER’S GRANDSON ESCHEWS FAMILY BUSINESS TO INSPIRE NEXT GENERATION OF INNOVATORS
I’M WORKING AS AN OPEN INNOVATOR. I SHARE MY IDEAS FREELY WITH THE WORLD, SO IF ANYBODY WANTS THE IDEA, THEY CAN USE IT. IF I DON’T SHARE IT WITH ANYONE, THE CHANCES ARE IT’S GOING TO STAY IN MY DRAWER FOR 10 YEARS. — CHARLES BOMBARDIER
Thomas Edison famously patented 1,093 inventions in his 84 years. Charles Bombardier, on the other hand, is trying to invent something new every week — a pace that puts him on track to outdo Edison by the time he’s 60.
Bombardier, 41, is the grandson of Joseph-Armand Bombardier, creator of the snowmobile and founder of Bombardier Inc., so it isn’t surprising that an entrepreneurial streak runs deep in his veins.
Even when Bombardier was working at his namesake company, he spent much of his free time thinking up ways to make the world a better, more efficient place.
By 2006, after spending seven years as an engineer at Bombardier Recreational Products and another decade before that working various jobs at the family firm, Bombardier couldn’t resist the lure of entrepreneurship and decided to strike out on his own.
“My father wanted me to stay at BRP, but I make my own decisions and I decided to take my chances,” Bombardier said. “I’ve always had this urge to do something great, probably because of my grandfather. And I’m more happy like this, being on my own, than working in an environment like a corporation.”
After a few years doing different things in the transportation space, including a stint as Segway Inc.’s distributor for Canada, Bombardier decided it was time to start sharing his seemingly infinite capacity for inventions with the world.
But, unlike Edison, Bombardier doesn’t patent his inventions because that goes against his principle of open innovation. He’s sharing his ideas to make the most of them, and tries to publish at least one new concept a week on the website of Imaginactive, a Montreal-based nonprofit he founded in 2013.
Imaginactive allows him to work with industrial designers to render his steady stream of ideas. He funds the organization and pays his designers out of his own pocket using income generated from previous ventures, including the sale of vehicle dealerships he owned and writing a newspaper column.
“The goal is to share my ideas, because I’ve got tons of them every week,” Bombardier said. “I’ve always felt bad about not being able to share them with people.”
The range of ideas is breathtaking. With names reminiscent of comic book characters, each invention has a rendering and a short description of its purpose: Korbiyor, a driverless, multimedia hearse; Snackr, a 3D food printer for autonomous cars and mass transit; Metropolis, a police drone equipped with a friendly holographic avatar; Jacknife, a shape-shifting car; and Firesound, a flying saucer that can extinguish fires using low-frequency sound waves.
But it’s Antipode, a supersonic business jet, that’s been generating the most attention for Bombardier lately, and no wonder. His idea is for a luxury business jet capable of reaching Mach 24, or 25,000 kilometres an hour, nearly 12 times faster than the Concorde.
In theory, this means passengers could fly from New York to London in less than an hour.
The idea started out as a different Bombardier invention called the Skreemr, an aircraft design based on NASA’s scramjets, experimental unmanned aircraft designed to fly at hypersonic speeds. But the Skreemr didn’t address the problems of sonic boom and overheating that come from rapid acceleration.
After he published the Skreemr idea, Bombardier said an engineering firm that does work for NASA contacted him about a new concept known as long- penetration mode, which redirects air flow to help reduce heat, noise and vibration on hypersonic aircraft.
This prompted him to draft an entirely new supersonic jet: the Antipode.
It sounds elaborate — the kind of thing engineers and scientists spend years working on — but Bombardier said it didn’t take him very long at all. “I didn’t spend seven years developing that idea; I spent a week developing that idea.”
He’s not trying to create real- world products that can one day be marketed to the masses, but wants to get people talking about boundary-pushing concepts.
“I would like to know what other people say,” he said. “Is there a market for that? What do you think about it? Can it work? Can we design an engine that would be able to do that? The idea is to share it and get the feedback.”
This is why Bombardier doesn’t bother patenting his ideas.
“I started patenting the first few ideas … but it took so much time and effort to describe the technical invention and all of that, that I decided to forget it and just skip that part.”
Asked if he’s worried that someone will steal one of his concepts and turn it into a money- maker, Bombardier said that’s the whole point.
“I’m working as an open innovator. I share my ideas freely with the world, so if anybody wants the idea, they can use it,” he said. “If I don’t share it with anyone, the chances are it’s going to stay in my drawer for 10 years.”
Although it’s hard to tell if his ideas have directly inspired other inventors, he said he’s seen products pop up that are very similar to his inventions. For example, his Wingsurf concept, a flying wing that a rider can stand on — akin to a wakeboard in the sky — is reflected in the Wingboard developed by Alabamabased Wyp Aviation.
Most people are lucky if they come up with one great invention in their lifetimes, but Bombardier said his ideas just come to him unprompted while he’s lying in bed or driving around or reading a magazine.
“It’s an open process,” he said. “I don’t sit and start to draft ideas on a board; it just comes up.”
Ultimately, Bombardier’s goal is twofold: inspire the next generation of inventors while helping researchers show their ideas in a new light.
To that end, he is beginning a PhD in mechanical engineering at Université de Sherbrooke and will set up an innovation lab on campus to help students turn their ideas into prototypes.
He has also published a book called Alpha that showcases 48 of his Imaginactive concepts, and he plans to finish an updated version this year that he will give away for free to schoolchildren across the country.
“By publishing my concepts I would like to inspire young kids to pursue careers in engineering and maybe entrepreneurship,” Bombardier said. “I’m trying to find the next Joseph- Armand Bombardier.”