As the media steps up the dialog about race in America, this stunning new
novel provides a compelling look at the truth about discrimination in
American business.
 
Paul Woodring's Inventions explores the optimism and subtle racism that
exists for African Americans in the boardrooms of corporate America.  It
also provides non-blacks the opportunity to explore the African American quest for success, while providing an inspirational roadmap to those who long to make it in the world of entrepreneurship.

Based on the threats of neighbors to his family, Robert (Robbie) Watson Jr. is thrust from his comfortable working class black neighborhood in Cleveland in the late 1950s to an integrated neighborhood where blacks are the minority.  He attends primarily white public schools and graduates from a predominantly white university in the early 1970s and discovers he is pursued by corporations to be the “token” black hire in their organizations.  He rejects this, and pursues his dream of designing a computer by forming his own company.  A success in his professional life, Robert struggles to decide which of the women in his personal world will claim his heart: the intelligent, exotic Elena, sexy Nisee or his glamorous business partner Penny. Meanwhile, omnipresent racism and corporate greed threaten to undermine his growing business as he travels to Japan to negotiate the deal of a lifetime.

Inventions weaves the technical and business detail of entrepreneurship between the U.S and Japan with relationships that are complicated by the psychological isolation of a black male in a white world. It is a story of one man’s search for identity, for the place he truly belongs and a love that will make him whole.