inventionthey

Inventionthey is a term used to describe a collaborative, plural-voiced approach to invention and innovation. It denotes a framework in which ideas, designs, and artifacts are produced through distributed collaboration, with emphasis on inclusive authorship and shared credit across diverse contributors. The name combines invention with the pronoun they to signal collective ownership rather than attribution to a single inventor.

Origin and usage: The term lacks a single formal origin and appears in discussions among open-innovation, participatory design, and open-source hardware communities. It is used to critique traditional inventor-centric narratives and to explore more democratic processes for shaping technology, products, and systems.

Practices and methods: Inventionthey projects commonly employ collaborative workshops, online design repositories, version-control workflows, open licenses, and explicit co-authorship. Governance models are designed to acknowledge all contributions, including non-technical participants, communities, and funders, with transparent decision-making.

Impact and challenges: Potential benefits include broader perspective, increased relevance, and faster iteration. Challenges may involve coordination overhead, ensuring meaningful credit, avoiding tokenism, and navigating differing standards of quality across contributors.

Relation to other concepts and examples: Inventionthey intersects with participatory design, co-creation, responsible innovation, and open-source hardware. Real-world instances are found in open hardware programs and community-driven design initiatives that publish designs with multiple contributors and clear attribution.

See also: open-source hardware, participatory design, co-creation, responsible innovation.