We need to find out how this new banking product performs in the real world and the first step is to make about 20 sheets of bills, out of plastic with gold particles in the bills and phosphors on the bills so they can be authenticated.
Since this is a Beta Version to experiment at low cost with the product, we would go to De La Rue, which has plenty of experience making bank bills with Europium phosphors on them and which would have no difficulty incorporating 1/10 oz of flour gold (fine particles) in the plastic substrate.
We will put the name of our bank on the bills, and perhaps a picture of a famous Chemist like Dimitri Mendeleev, or John Jacob Berzelius or John Dalton, and we would put the weight of gold (1/10th oz) contained in the bill.
The bills would then be used as a new kind of option for senior executives of the bank with meritorious service to the bank in the past five years. Such persons would be allowed to buy limited numbers of the new bank bills at 50% discount. We just want volunteers. We do not want to force these bills on anybody. So, by making executives pay half of the London Gold Fix, on the day they exercise the option, to participate in this Beta Version Rollout Experiment, we get enthusiasts, and hopefully people who will file detailed experience reports about how the bills worked, or failed to work, for them.
To keep costs down, we will only have five bank branches in Europe that are equipped to authenticate and redeem the bills. These branches could be our own bank, or a sister bank that has agreed to work with us on this experiment. So, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, and Amsterdam will do fine, or any other five cities in Europe, or maybe just three cities, but a total of five branches in the experiment.
Paying De La Rue to make the bills is a matter of negotiation. Cash, of course, should be involved, but only to cover their added out-of-pocket costs. Their real payment is the entre they get with us, if the bills they make are good enough, and when we scale up to a larger experiment, perhaps involving 100 sheets or 1000 sheets of bills. Another part of the compensation they get for working with us on this experiment is the know-how, trade secrets, and follow-on patents they will get from actually making the bills.
There’s no non-obvious innovation for De La Rue to use Europium phosphors to make coded record sensors/optical. Putting fine metal particles into sheets of plastic is not innovative enough to be patentable, but De La Rue might easily develop some trade secrets in actually making the bills with gold in them.
They, like anybody, need product pipeline to stay competitive. The bank knows it, the bill maker knows it, the investors know it.
We are now in a sort of dry period for major innovations because of how profitable it is for top management to raise earnings per share by just buying in their own shares. Programming a computer to do this is easy, and those acquisition algorithms are off-the-shelf technology. Why would any top executive try a new thing when buying in shares is working so well?
Here’s why. They learned in Business School that growing the customer based is what keeps an organization in business, and this means product pipeline. New things coming in every year that widen your moat, fortify your patent wall, and that distinguish your organization from all those who wish to compete against you in your market sector. You want your share of the markets in which you operate to be at least 50%, or 90% if you can get it.
Buying in your own shares is going to work for maybe another year. After that, you must have something to keep you competitive in a world where customer want services and products that are new, special, different, and uniquely value-adding to their lives or businesses.
So, before you go to your three-martini lunch in the Admiral’s Room with the Teak paneling, just read US10176661B2. I know, I know, you’re busy. OK — tell your General Counsel to get the patent at patents.google.com under Method to Authenticate Value Documents or Items by Robert Fenton Gary. Have him print 50 copies, and hand them round to your engineering people with requests that they report back on it. No engineer has ever seen my patent that does not love it.
So, then you cost out the Beta Version Experiment and find out how cheap it would be to do dry run on this major currency innovation, (that will surely replace Bitcoin, and all the Crypto Currencies), and you find it would be quite do-able, and helpful in at least three ways including rewarding top performing executives.
Then, you contact me at robert.gary@gmail.com and express an interest in my patent.
ROBERTFENTONGARY.com 