I got an e-mail from a young man asking me for some “not too hard” ideas for him to use for his school’s invention convention. I get several of these requests each school year and I feel it’s important to encourage young people.
I have attended many of these invention conventions for students and am always amazed at the creativity and ingenuity demonstrated by the young people.
However, this particular e-mail has reminded me that I should keep trying to instill in young people and entrepreneurs that an idea is not an invention. Inventors do not sit around their offices all day thinking of things to invent! That would be wheel spinning.
When you solve a problem you have in some cases invented a solution – if you have done it in such a way that the solution is patentable.
For instance when Johnson & Johnson, a major medical supply company, hired my product development company they had a problem. Their problem was that people were having difficulty opening one of the company’s most popular products, the Band-Aid(r).
Each Band-Aid(r) had a red string strip up the side inside the paper wrapper. People had to first find the string, then grasp the string and then pull it to get to the bandage inside. Some people had difficulty finding and then grasping the string, especially when they really needed a Band-Aid(r) in a hurry!
So after investigating the alternatives, I solved the problem by designing an entirely new Band-Aid(r) package that opened by pulling the paper package apart at the top and eliminating the red string entirely. The same process is still in use today.
The closure was a patentable process and truly an invention.
The best inventions have happened because someone either solved an existing problem, or in the course of solving one problem came up with a solution to another problem. Many “mistakes” have become successful inventions. The one that comes to mind is 3M’s Post- it(r) note. This little mistake has become a staple of everyday life.
I suggest that people interested in becoming “product developers” go to their local supermarkets, toy stores, or hardware superstores and carefully look at the products. Try to find a few that you think would benefit from some improvement. Perhaps you currently work with some tool or piece of equipment that should be improved. Do some market research. If you are only one of ten people who would benefit from an improvement to this particular tool, then scrap the idea. There must be a market for your invention.
I have invented products simply for our own use. I just didn’t know it at the time. My wife has always loved horses and has been involved with pony clubs. There were a few products for horses that we thought would be extremely useful so we went ahead and produced them. They didn’t sell. It was quite expensive to find out a basic lesson: don’t invent products because you like them.
The process of invention is market-driven.
Article – Copyright 2001 Stanley I. Mason. Syndicated by ParadigmTSA
