My long-time friend, Adrian Palkus, just published a book about his long career as an inventor. The title is Adrian, An American Artificer. When I asked what “artificer” mean, he replied that it describes a person who goes beyond inventing a product concept, builds the product, gets it into production and for sale in the marketplace.
I met Adrian in April when we both of our companies were exhibiting in the Del Mar Electronics & Manufacturing Show in the San Diego region. I had just published my book; Can American Manufacturing Be Saved? Why we should and how we can. He bought my book and invited me to attend the May meeting of the San Diego Inventors Forum (SDIF), which I did. That began a long relationship as I soon joined the steering committee which ran SDIF and then become a founding board member when it was incorporated in 2014. I stayed on the board until September 2025.
I had the honor of reading an advanced copy of his book. It is an unfiltered “tell-all” book beginning with his childhood, teenage years, first jobs, and service in the U.S. Navy before sharing the real story of his more than 40 years spent inventing, building products, and staring companies. The book captures the journey behind more than 300 developed products, starting as a teenager when he invented a prosthetic hand for children. While many of his early inventions were as an employee for an existing company, he acquired 19 issued patents, and either started or helped to start dozens of other companies—including four medical device companies.
He candidly shares the breakthroughs, the setbacks, the hard lessons learned, and the persistence required to turn an idea into reality. His story isn’t all wins. It’s about the victories that made it worthwhile—and the devastating losses that made it real.
Adrian ran the San Diego Inventors Forum for over 15 years, coaching more than 2,000 inventors, helping them turn ideas into reality while navigating the often-difficult path from concept to market. Adrian created sort of a curriculum of topics to be covered in our monthly meetings starting with vetting invention concepts all the way to getting the product to market. I gave an annual presentation on “How to Select the Right Processes and Sources for Your New Products.”
Besides working with Adrian with SDIF, my sales agency, ElectroFab Sales, represented A Squared Technologies, the contract manufacturing company that Adrian and Amy had founded to build Adrian’s products along with the products of other inventors and existing companies in the San Diego region. We continued representing A Squared after Adrian and Amy moved to South Carolina in 2018 and were sad when they closed A Squared in June 2025.
While Adrian was busy inventing his own products and helping other inventors, Amy ran A Squared. This gave me first-hand knowledge of the trials and tribulations he experienced for two of his medical product startups, Iyia and Cure Care, that he writes about in his book.
After Adrian was settled in South Carolina, he saw a need for an inventors’ group in his new region. He founded the South Carolina Inventors Forum and received a great deal of support from local business organizations and interest from inventors and entrepreneurs. I am honored that Adrian included in his book the blog article I wrote about the South Carolina Inventors Forum in 2021. Unfortunately, the COVID pandemic shutdowns ended in-person meetings, and the Forum never recovered the same level of interest and attendance after the shutdowns ended.
I also collaborated with Adrian in advocating for inventors’ rights and may have written more articles about our broken patent system and inventors rights than any other person. I was never able to join Adrian in person with other members of U S Inventors when they went to Washington, D.C. to fight for inventors’ patent rights, but did get to attend the first US Inventors conference in Alexandria, VA in 2023.
Adrian has been a leader with US Inventors in shaping conversations around intellectual property and innovation. His book includes information about how our patent system became broken with the passage of the American Invents Act of 2011, which changed the system to first to file instead of first to invent and set up the Patent Trial and Review Board. As a result, about 84% of patents are invalidated, and inventors lose the rights to their patents. He also discusses the adverse effect on the patent system by Supreme Court decisions such as the 2006 eBay vs. MercExchange which had “effectively eliminated injunctive relief (the ability to stop an infringer from making, selling, using, or importing a patented invention.) If an infringer steals a patented invention, they keep it. This has unleased massive predatory infringement.”
He also shared his experiences in two documentaries that highlight the challenges for independent inventors: Invalidated and Innovation Race.
When I asked Adrian why he wrote this book, he gave me permission to quote from his Facebook post answering this question. He wrote, “I wanted to tell the truth about what it’s really like to take an idea out of your head and try to turn it into something real. I wrote it because I didn’t want 40 years of lessons—both the good ones and the painful ones—to disappear when I’m gone.
I’ve had big wins. I’ve had heartbreaking losses. I’ve fought for inventor’s rights. I’ve helped thousands of other people pursue their ideas. And I’ve learned that invention isn’t really about patents or products. It’s about having the courage to believe that something that doesn’t exist today ought to exist—and then being stubborn enough to make it happen.
But there was another reason. I’ve met thousands of people with great ideas who were afraid to pursue them. I wanted to give those people some encouragement—and perhaps a little bit of the hard-earned knowledge I gained along the way.
I’ve made a lot of things in my life, but I realized that perhaps the most useful thing I could make now was a roadmap for the next inventor. If someone reads my story and says, ‘You know what? I’m going to give my idea a chance,’ then I’ve accomplished what I wanted.”
He added, “if it inspires even one person to pursue an idea they almost gave up on, then writing this book was worth it.”
If you’ve ever had an idea, fought to bring a product into the marketplace, or believed in building something from nothing—this book is for you.