Indiana Inventors Association

I am strong!   And now, I am smart. — The Hominids (Saturday Night Live, 1979) The ability to adapt nature to our needs is a remarkable and inventive talent.   If you want to use that talent to earn a living, it helps to be able to adapt human nature to your needs. Matt told us about how he and four other engineers founded a company on a shoestring budget in their spare time.   The co-founders got along so well with each other that the attorney preparing the founding legal documents empowered the company instead of the co-founders.   All were equal partners and all had inventive talent but the company had nothing to sell.   Matt soon invented a marketable product that benefitted small businesses and that became the focus of the company.   He applied for a patent and, being the team player that he was, unconditionally assigned the patent rights to the company.   Customers liked the product and prospects looked so good that the c...

Measure twice, cut once. Common sense tells us to test the water before jumping in.   Inventors need to know who their customers are and what their customers want before spending a lot of time and money on inventing things/services and bringing them to market. Helen Colby, PhD , (assistant professor of marketing, Indiana University Kelley School of Business) treated us to her insights on how an individual on a limited budget can conduct high quality customer research.   This brief summary of her presentation doesn’t begin to contain all of her excellent advice.   To learn more, talk with someone who was there. When should you do customer research?   Whenever the benefit is greater than the cost.   Customer research can answer questions about any aspect of marketing that is important to you (eg, what to invent, what to sell, where and when to sell it, how to advertize it, how much to charge for it). How do you conduct research?   First a...

SCORE Indianapolis mentors Bill Petrovic (retired vice president and treasurer, Roche Diagnostics) and Steve Click (retired national sales manager and DigiNet manager, WTHR) dazzled us with a description of all that SCORE (Service Corps Of Retired Executives, a nonprofit organization supported by the U.S. Small Business Administration) provides.   Entrepreneurs and small businesses with all levels of business experience benefit from expert advice given through confidential individual mentoring, group workshops, and a well‑stocked, vetted library—for free or low cost. The 45 mentors at SCORE Indianapolis (including a retired patent attorney) point a variety of people in the right direction.   Someone thinking about starting a business is shown how to focus on the appropriate sequence of essentials, how to develop a successful business model, how to find customers, how to raise startup money, and how to develop an exit strategy (based on a positive brand, loyal emp...

On matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of substance, stand like a rock. —Author unknown Jared Adams (COO, Canvas ) showed us how to profit from using the lean startup method to add substance to style.   The founders of Canvas started with two things: a background in information technology and the observation that many young adults prefer to interact with others indirectly.   Knowing that this lifestyle increases the efficiency of some kinds of communication, the founders wondered if employers and young job applicants would rather text than talk. To find out, they developed a text-based intelligent interviewing software program and raised $2 million in seed capital.   Because the founders needed help to know what to build and how people would use their product, they asked trusted senior human resources (HR) people across the country to find flaws in the original program.   The HR people found several embarrassing flaws but, sur...

For creative individuals who hope to profit from their ideas, invention is only a small part of the story.   Consumers buy products (material realities), not inventions (ideas).   John Ritchison (intellectual property attorney from Anderson, IN) offered us advice on how to best market our products: be patient, stay focused, and don’t get frustrated.   Bottom line—be bold.   Go big or go home. An inventor typically has 3 marketing options: make and sell a product or method, sell the invention to others who will use it to make and sell a product or method, or license (rent) the invention to others who will use it to make and sell a product or method.   For all 3 options, learn all you can about your product’s market, study your business opportunities, and draft a basic business plan that can take you from point A to point B. Here are some useful steps for learning how to take your product to market. Find out how others have marketed a product sim...

Never be satisfied with anything, everything can be done better than it is now being done.    — Eli Lilly, Jr. RonJackson (president, Jackson Systems; longtime member of the Indiana Inventors Association; and holder of several patents) left his HVAC company and inventing long enough to share his unbridled enthusiasm for them with us.   “Controls Done Right”— his company’s trademark—conveys Mr. Jackson’s inventive spirit.   Here are some of Mr. Jackson’s suggestions for inventors and innovators. Inventing If you can, invent for contractors or original equipment manufacturers .   You won’t spend time and money educating them on the value of your invention; they already know.   Keep your inventions simple so that users will like them. Look at items or methods throughout your day and ask: What’s wrong with them?   How can I improve them?   Write down your answers so you don’t forget them. Develop a portfolio of inventions...