I would like to make some hypothesis about the business strategy Rossi might be pursuing. This is an interesting question regardless of whether the technology he presents is True or False, whether it works or it doesn’t, that is regardless of whether he is truthful or a scammer. In short, I’d like to follow the money.
Let’s start from the False case. One must consider that: - Rossi is offering a material good, a device. Therefore, he cannot operate the usual Ponzi scheme (new money given as profit to old investors) nor its Madoff variant (new money used to cover withdrawals, old investors happy with paper profits “reinvested”) - Rossi is not looking for investors, actually chasing them, it seems; much less is he looking for “retail” investors (he said “when the company is more solid” or something like that: another couple of years) - Rossi is not looking for R&D funds, but apparently sinking his own funds into the enterprise - Rossi is not offering the goods for retail sale; actually, until now, he has refused to sell to people who asked - Rossi is not starting a pyramid sale scheme: buy a franchise to sell e-cat, recruit others to buy a franchise and you’ll get a cut of their sales, too. No Amway, to be clear. - Rossi (in the unofficial/official website) is offering standard cheat-proof B2B conditions (money in escrow until delivery is accepted by the customer) to sell goods for a minimum price of €200K, therefore only to people with some idea of what an escrow is. It’s hard to see how he can make any money under this set of circumstances. It is also hard to fit the show of Oct. 28 under this hypothesis. Hiring actors to play engineers (well enough to fool all those present, apparently) would have sense as a coup-de-teatre to ensnare more retail “early adopters”, those who would want to be the first on the block to own an e-cat. But he has not changed his sale conditions: retail e-cat available not before a couple of years. So, he can be - a fraudster who is not looking for money - a fraudster who has a loooooot of patience - a fraudster who thinks he can fool the customers’ engineers long enough to claim his money - a fraudster who is really bad at running scams - a practical joker who is rolling on the floor laughing when he thinks how many people are falling for his tricks and who has a lot of money to waste Let’s go to the True case. One must consider that: - Rossi does not have much of a patent - Indeed, the Italian patent is given almost automatically, with only formal checks, and is easily overcome even in Italy - The text submitted for WP, US or EU patent does not describe in sufficient detail the invention: it claims all combinations of Ni and H2, pretty much - The patent text, beside the fear of uncovering too much, also seems to indicate that Rossi does not understand all the parameters that control the phenomenon. Not surprising, obviously - However, Rossi must know that the difference between his device and that described, for example, in Piantelli/Focardi makes it easier for the next people to work on this to get better, maybe much better. Jed Rothwell already described this very well as the syndrome of the light bulb inventor. - Under these circumstances, if he convinced the world that is device is the real thing, he could count on thousands of labs, many well funded and tooled, to start working on this same system, and very likely to find a better system before he could have made much money - Also, were he to sell retail the real thing, proof of it working would come out soon, and again he would be scooped by others, helped by the reverse-engineering of his available samples I guess that his apparent strategy to try and sell large equipment to customers selected so as to be non-competitors and unlikely to divulge the secrets (the US armed forces come to mind as an example) is the only one that has some chances of success. And is consistent with all the evidence we have. I would not believe he started out thinking to get there, he just got to this state balancing his fear of being scooped with the need to advertise his success. Of course, it also is a short term strategy: in order to maximize profit, Rossi must be able to smell the moment when the reality of the technology will start to become accepted by potential competitor, and sell licenses right then, when they are worth the most. Then, he can set himself up as one of the producers, or just enjoy his money and fame. Conference circuit? Anyway, there is an apparent business strategy that is consistent with the evidence if Rossi does have a working LENR. I cannot see any business strategy if he does not, consistent with what is happening. Any suggestions? Ah, of course there is a third case. Rossi might BELIEVE that the e-cat works, and be acting under that hypothesis. However, since none of the prototypes actually work, he would have had to manipulate all of the public demos, all in some different way, too, in order to hide this fact. Given that he also would have had to hire actors to play engineers for Oct. 28 under such delusion, this would be not a case of fraud or discovery, but a mighty interesting clinical case. Mvit
