None of the top 10 created any game-changing devices on a par with Edison’s lightbulb, but most people benefit every day from some discovery by the creative minds in the chip business whose efforts have improved laptop computers, cell phones, and digital cameras. Kia Silverbrook, the most secretive, runs Silverbrook Research in Sydney, where he has led a decadelong, superstealth effort to create new computer-printer technology that could be on the market by 2009. At the opposite end of the technology spectrum, Donald Weder holds 1,350 patents, all from his work at Highland Supply Corp. in Highland, Illinois—a decorative-packaging company founded by his father in 1937. Among his contributions to humankind: a patent titled “Performed pot cover formed of polymeric materials having a texture or appearance simulating the texture or appearance of paper.”

The most prolific female inventor alive is biologist Gisela Lorenz, who retired six years ago from the German chemical company BASF. Lorenz has 363 U.S. patents, mostly in the realm of  “crop protection”—fertilizers and pesticides. Her prolificacy is partly because she oversaw a team of researchers and her name went on patents she worked on regardless of whether or not the main idea was hers. (When reached at her home in Germany, Lorenz said she had no idea she was the leading female holder of U.S. patents.) Two of the other top women are Jennifer Hillman and Olga Bandman, who both worked for the U.S. biotech company Incyte and have 327 and 250 patents, respectively.

Yet such an output among women is rare. A 2006 Harvard University study found that while women are no less inventive than men, traditionally they have not been in a position to seek patents. “For a long time, I was the only woman in the kind of job I had at BASF,” Lorenz says. “It’s getting better now.”

What can be learned from the leading inventors about the origins of their extraordinary creativity? Certainly education plays a role: Most of the chip inventors have doctorates in science and engineering. But, interestingly, none of the group cites degrees as a key. Instead, many talk about the usefulness of a broad education and how it helps them patch together solutions by calling upon their knowledge of multiple disciplines. “My background is in digital electronics and software, but I’ve deliberately become multidisciplinary—jack-of-all-trades, master of none,” Silverbrook says.

Not surprisingly, most successful inventors were born with an engineering mind-set. Most of them were kids who either built things or took toys and gadgets apart to see how they worked. Micron’s Salman Akram grew up in Nigeria. His father was an electrical engineer, his mother a mathematician. He says his parents fostered his creativity by giving him parts of toys and encouraging him to improvise. Joseph Straeter, Weder’s former colleague at Highland Supply, grew up on a dairy farm, the second youngest of six brothers. He says, “Anything that wasn’t worth anything anymore, I took apart.”

How do inventors actually think of inventions? Most of them say they first define a problem, then come up with a way to solve it. “I look for something not being done efficiently,” says Micron’s Leonard Forbes. “I tour around a lot of conferences and keep up on the literature to try to identify problems. I’ll go through different approaches. It’s not usually an ‘aha’ moment, but more a process of elimination.”