March 2008 Summary
Despite inclement weather, 6 brave attendees received valuable advice on early stage innovation from inventors Ron Jackson and Richard McVicker.
Before investing a lot of money in an invention:
- Test the invention and its market.
- Build a prototype of your invention and test it in the real world. Find out what the prototype's flaws are, so you can correct them and make the invention more marketable.
- Test market your invention to find out who might actually buy it. Are potential customers excited enough about your invention to pay for it? How much will they pay? How many will pay? Are expected sales large enough to justify your investment of time, energy, and resources?
- Find out who can manufacture your invention and at what cost. Can you sell your invention for a price high enough to pay for manufacturing and shipping and still make a profit? Look in stores to identify products similar to yours and contact the manufacturer for more information.
- Find out who can help sell your invention. A good ally might be an established business whose products complement your own. For example, if using your invention requires a customer to purchase a different item, a business selling that item might be willing to sell your invention. Look for those win-win situations.
- Identify your degree of commitment to innovation.
- Does the thought of innovating excite you enough to get you out of bed in the morning? Innovation is a lot of work and there is no guarantee of success. Don't invest your money in innovation unless you are willing to see it through to the end - good or bad.
- Go ahead and file a provisional patent application if you think someone else might do the same.
- But wait until you have evaluated the potential profitability of your invention before continuing with a significantly more expensive nonprovisional patent application.
- Filing a provisional patent application for an invention gives you a 1 year reservation within which to file a nonprovisional application for that invention. Use that year to evaluate potential profitability.