Repeated unjustified comments "your demonstration sucks" during a presentation

This is something you should speak to your line manager about. A manager three levels above you saying "your demonstration sucks" during the demonstration is not something that you yourself are in to position to handle.

Escalate it to your line manager as soon as possible. Someone at that level speaking to you like that has connotations far past your own work.

Maybe you are both right. It is quite possible that both of the following are true:

• your invention / innovation is valuable;
• your presentation skills suck.

Since I have no idea how your presentation looks like, I cannot advise you on how to improve it. I just recommend you to use some search engine and find good ways to present inventions / innovations, for the purpose of catching attention.

While my colleague literally shouted to the director

That should not have happened. Shouting is obviously bad presentation skills. Whatever happens, keep your calm. Would you buy something from somebody who shouts at you?

... the n+3 made this comment "I don't really believe in magic numbers" ...

So your N+3 caught the expression "magic numbers". It is quite possible that he paid attention to the best of his abilities, but the was offered a "language" he could not understand or use. So he made the best comment the could, on the only things that he kind-of understood.

I am considering open sourcing my approach

Well, you need to do research about this too. Please note that I am not a lawyer, and I cannot give competent legal advice.

The idea is that your work was done for your current employer. If your employer decides to not use it, does not mean automatically that the work is now your property. therefore, you might not be legally allowed to use it outside the company, for profit or for open source.

If you find the legal background to take your work outside of the company, then you can either open your own company, selling licenses to your invention, or just sell your invention entirely to some other company.

But first, clarify the legal aspects of the situation.

Some brainstorming

Since N+3 is non-technical, he is most likely an economist. Therefore, your presentation should have focused on things like

• number of product lines affected
• number of units produced per product line
• % improvement in the accuracy of the drones doing their job
• fuel-needs reduction
• increase of range / autonomy
• impact on final price

I estimate that for him, the technical part of the presentation should have been maximum:

• 2 slides
• 1-2 minutes
• pictures and overview diagrams only
• 5% of the entire presentation.

There is a known fact that if you write a document for 2 purposes, you need to change the content of the document quite drastically:

• dissertation for the PhD
• book for the large public.

Another example: the business plan. It has totally different content based on the target audience:

• the customers
• the suppliers
• the development team
• the sales and purchasing
• the business partners.

Ohh. Stupid Boss appears and kills the invention of your life.

Believe me, not you are the first with whom it happens.

What I see:

1. The Boss was clearly unprofessional. One does not talk on this way to his own employee, particularly not to his skilled employee.
2. The Boss is now in the process of delegating the task to the n+2 girl, thus the last what he wants, is dealing with the details of the work of someone on n-3 (for him). If he also fears his job or he is on serious uncertainity, yes he might pretty well say this. He can do that, you are a speck of dust to him.
3. Very likely, he is not really interested in your work details.
4. He was a Chinese and you are a Westerner, sad, but A) you have no proof B) probably he is pretty well accepted to do this to you, because you are a Westerner.

Note, Taiwanese Chinese is a different Chinese dialect from Mandarin, they talk essentially on a foreign language even if they talk on Mandarin.

Your key is n+2. She is becoming stronger and she has a direct contact with n+1. You can affect n+2 over indirect channels with n+1. You must reach with n+1 a shared reality about that your invention provides good results. If n+2 buys it, n+3 will say "OK".

Talking with the HR was simply a stupid idea. HR is not your friend. HR represents the company, where n+3 is a local boss, and you are a foreigner level 0. They have even much lesser idea from your work as the boss. They are not interested. Their best to solve this problem is doing nothing and waiting for happening nothing. Their second best option to solve this problem is firing you. Hope that they will choose the first.

Forget talking to the HR.

You are not so important in the company as you would think. You have a development detail to make better drones, fine. He is reponsible for the work of about 100 guys, he barely knows their name, and the competitors are brutally strong. What to do "to your idea", that he would more happily delegate to n+1, he has a hundreds of more important tasks to do.

It’s interesting. I once worked at a multi-billion dollar company. Lots of process, and depending on your grade you were expected to work in different ways. For example, it was not my job solving interpersonal conflicts, but my managers. The company sent the list of these expectations / requirements for all grades to everyone. So I knew the expectations for my n+1, n+2, and n+3. And reviews were done for everyone.

I can state clearly that this interaction should have given him a big fat “does not meet expectations” in his next review.

The n+3 made a fool of himself by repeatedly dismissing the work in front of the audience without giving any technical or professional reasoning. Before following up, clarify your goal: are you looking to convince others, get support, or just vent. If it’s the latter, it’s already clear that he was out of line.

When comments aren’t accompanied by explanations, the most professional approach is to ask clarifying questions, document your responses, and focus on the evidence and results you can control, don’t let vague criticism derail your work.

Sometimes the best move is to let it go and focus on your work.

You don't have to deal with the out of scope questions. Your manager does. Let your manager manage, and focus on doing your own job to the best of your ability.

Upper management may just have been having a bad day. If not, it is your managers job to pry what was wrong with the demo out of them, not yours.

Be aware that sometimes projects fail to meet the company's immediate needs, no matter how good they are. Get used to seeing good stuff shelved because something else is judged more important in the short term; it is going to happen on a regular basis throughout your career. If you are unusually lucky, it may be possible to take some of those projects back off the shelf later. By then you might be in a position to lead that effort.

(I had one that a department spent several years on, before the department was raided for head count for another project that was deemed more important. We managed to get a few patents through before we were shut down, and a snapshot of the project was theoretically released as part of a product, but as far as I know never mentioned and never maintained thereafter. If I ever find time, I may try to revive the concept independently... though the intellectual property issues could get nasty. That's the downside of doing work for hire. The upside is that you get paid whether or not the product reaches the market.)

Playing the devil's advocate, while the person is probably not very constructive, it may also be true that your presentation didn't reach the intended audience.

Maybe he is stressed, arrogant and considered rightfully or not that what you have presented will not impress his intended customers.

I don't know if you can do much to improve things going forward. Perhaps obtain feedback from the lower level managers to understand what impresses him and how does he ingest information, so that you can adapt to it (in case you care enough).

I would commend any open-sourcing of technology, just make sure it doesn't put you into legal troubles. Especially if your company abandons the project, that would be a great service to the wide community and be a credit badge for you, in case you look for a job later (or maybe somebody will go after you, seeing your invention).

If you're just looking for how you could handle an extremely dismissive public feedback like this, I'd suggest a conversation

"So you believe this technology has no value and the company has no interest in pursuing it?"

and when he confirms,

"I'm truly sorry for wasting your time, we'll immediately switch to other projects. And since this idea has no value to the company, I assume you would agree to let us to file a patent for this, using only our own time and resources?

-OR- alternatively, on your next call with the Customer, you could present them with a list of areas of technology development that would be most valuable to them. If they choose VIO as a top priority, then you could use backchannels to arrange for someone to ask your boss n+3, if your company has any ideas for VIO enhancements!