Intellectual Ventures Laboratory

Be Scrappy, By Design

BE SCRAPPY

Space to Invent, Create, and Make

Intellectual Ventures — the discovery arm of Nathan Myhrvold's expansive patent portfolio — runs on a simple mantra: "Be scrappy." Nothing fancy is required, just space to invent. That ethos shaped a facility built less like a corporate lab and more like a working invention factory, where research, fabrication, and testing happen side by side under one roof.

An anechoic test chamber, its foam-wedged walls built to isolate signals from every stray echo — one of the specialized testing environments packed into the facility. — Anechoic testing chamber lined with rows of foam wedges, viewed from inside.

A CATALYST FOR CHANGE

The Constraint That Became an Opportunity

Divided across five buildings in north Bellevue, IV staff lost inordinate amounts of time walking between locations, dodging traffic on a busy arterial, and working in self-selected silos created by seating separation. Rent was low, but the "scrappy" that had evolved was hindering the work rather than encouraging it. Fate intervened when Sound Transit's east rail link targeted two of IV's primary buildings for condemnation — the constraint that finally pushed IV toward a better home, with the project partially funded through Sound Transit relocation money.

Workshop area with machine tools, red equipment cart, and overhead lighting.

RESEARCH IN MOTION

Bringing every discipline under one roof means researchers move fluidly between benchtop chemistry, precision fabrication, and specialized testing — the kind of collision of disciplines that "scrappy" was always meant to encourage, now finally supported by the space itself.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

From Bench Science to Precision Hardware

The facility supports work ranging from delicate benchtop research to precision optical and mechanical hardware — evidence of just how wide IV's invention pipeline runs.

SCRAPPY, BUT BUILT RIGHT

A Factory for Invention, Finally Under One Roof

A researcher can walk from a calculating engine built in the 1800s to a live vacuum chamber test in under a minute — no more dodging traffic between buildings to get there. What Sound Transit forced, the new facility delivered: a single, better home for a culture that never wanted anything but room to work.