Indiana Inventors Association

80% of success is showing up.   — Woody Allen Erik Magner, PhD (president, Meister Cook) and BetsyMagner (marketing manager, Meister Cook) issued a charismatic call to inventors — Don’t be afraid.   Find your passion and use it to start your own business.   Using their own success story to inspire us, Mr. Magner shared a 6-part strategy that helped them create in less than 10 years a 2-person company ranked by Inc. 5000 as the 41 st fastest‑growing company (2 nd fastest‑growing manufacturer) in the United States. Identify an important technical problem that you care about. William Osler (a founder of modern medicine) advised physicians, “ Listen to your patient; he is telling you the diagnosis.”   Likewise in industry, listen to the experts; they will tell you what problems are commercially important.   Mr. Magner’s first challenge in the food industry was a client’s request for a more heat-efficient hamburger broiler.   The broiler he...

Though she be but little, she is fierce.   — Shakespeare, A Midsommer Nights Dreame Who would have thought that a small nonprofit organization in Carmel, IN could unlock the secret to preventing chronic malnutrition worldwide?   Glenn H. Sullivan, PhD (chairman/CEO Quintessence Nutraceuticals, Inc.; co‑founder, Sustainable Nutrition International ; senior partner, Intermark Partners Strategic Management, LLC; professor emeritus, Food Science Institute, Purdue University; recipient, USPTO Patents for Humanity Award ) told us how he and his co-inventors (U.S. patent US8,945,642 ) became alchemists by learning how to turn trash into treasure. An estimated 925 million individuals were malnourished in 2010.   One third of the children in developing countries (and many in Indiana) suffer from chronic malnutrition, a condition that kills them or prevents them from becoming independent adults.   Malnutrition could be prevented with rice, a cereal g...

[ Thanks to Dave Zedonis for this article ] All inventors need prototypes of their inventions.   Members of Club Cyberia—Mark Owens (marketing director; marketing@clubcyberia.com.org ; 317-721-2582), his son Austin (events director), and David Norris (equipment director)—let us know about their maker space: a facility equipped for making prototypes inexpensively.   There, do-it-yourself people meet each other and use available tools and work stations to build, collaborate, invent, and learn.   The club is open to members 24 hours every day and offers a tour of the facility to the public on the first Saturday of each month or by appointment. The facility (7,300 square feet for work and meetings) offers an independent inventor the opportunity to develop and build a detailed prototype of an invention.   Available equipment includes hand tools; drill presses, milling machines, lathes and (soon) a press brake; a full set of wood working equipment; 3-D printer...

And they asked me how I did it; and I gave 'em the Scripture text, "You keep your light so shining a little in front o' the next!" They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind, And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind. —      Rudyard Kipling, The "Mary Gloster" Richard McVicker, member of the Indiana Inventors Association for 40 years, patent illustrator at Barnes & Thornburg LLP for 49 years, and patent-holding inventor for 54 years, graciously shared his hard-won insights into innovation with us. Spend money to get a good prototype of your invention, but try to save on everything else.   A good, tested prototype helps you understand your invention and helps you explain it to others (patent attorney, investor, manufacturer, customer, etc.).   For example, Mr. McVicker invented and patented a 10 foot tall yard light, advertised it at the Indiana Home and G...

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.        - Mike Tyson Paul Moses ( pemoses@prf.org ; director of Purdue Research Parks in New Albany and Indianapolis ; manager and co-founder of INnovation Angels ; president & chair‑elect of Venture Connectors ) told us about Purdue University’s new emphasis on getting things done.  The result is a record-breaking 24 startups (based on Purdue’s intellectual property) formed in fiscal year 2014, triple that in 2013. Mr. Moses helps people turn an idea into a business.  One of the first things he asks a startup founder (not someone else hired by the founder) to do is to put the horse before the cart, to adapt the startup to fit the market.  This not only increases the startup’s probability of success, but also attracts investors with evidence of guaranteed customers (i.e., profit) and with evidence that the founder is a good business person—adaptable, coachable, and capab...

Report by Dave Zedonis Sarah Woodruff , business development manager at Catalyst PDG, Inc. (Indianapolis, IN), told us how a product development company such as Catalyst can quickly and effectively help an inventor embody an idea and bring it to market. Develop your idea as best you can before hiring professional developers, because their services are expensive (up to $20,000 for a prototype). Find out who your potential customers are and what they want, so you can give developers a very good idea of what product you want from them. Professional developers offer a variety of services, such as: market research, including focus groups and customer surveys, to help you design a product that your potential customers want; prototyping, to make sure your invention works, with the aid of 3-D designing and printing, modeling, problem solving, selecting materials, tooling, and machining;   small scale production of thermoplastic products with injection molding machines;   ...