Stealth medical technologies

The need to keep innovation under wraps until it has been allowed to develop enough to maximize the value is driving more and more companies to eschew any kind of promotion until they are actively seeking investment to formally bring the technologies out into the open as part of market introduction.

At least by our anecdotal evidence -- in the number of companies who we identify (by corporate filing or otherwise) but who have successfully avoided disclosing the nature of their technology anywhere.

There is a change in the dynamics at work here. It is doubtful that it is a diminution of hubris among entrepreneurs that is undercutting self-promotion, since pride is the trait that sets them out on their own in the first place. It is instead the result of at least two forces: (1) tacit recognition that with funding comes insidious influence to be studiously avoided until absolutely unavoidable and (2) tacit recognition that the hunger is great enough for new technologies that the innovator can take greater risk in funding from the 3F's before seeking formal investment at market introduction.

Of course, we have ways of piercing the stealth veil, and we're getting better at doing so.