Simple ideas are powerful. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to come up with a successful and lucrative idea. A quote from Seth Godin, the author of Linchpin really captures what I mean. “Don’t think outside the box, but next to it,” he says.
Why do I advise against big, earth-shattering ideas? Because they are incredibly high-risk. If an idea really is that unique and creative, it is going to demand a lot of support. New technologies and equipment may need to be designed to manufacture it. The public is going to need to be educated about why it’s important and how it’s going to make their lives better. Both of these things demand a lot of capital. And there’s really no guarantee that there’s even a market for such a revolutionary idea. The benefit to altering or improving an existing idea is the knowledge and confidence that the desire for that product already exists and isn’t likely to quickly go away. Most investors and potential licensees are going to be highly aware of the risk associated with ‘big’ ideas, and more reluctant to take on your product. Some big ideas are patented before the owner has even proved if the idea can actually be made a competitive price, or even made at all!
Big ideas make the world go round. But most inventors and entrepreneurs simply don’t have the capital to take on the great risk associated with them. If you design a product with a slight change that improves it, a company can easily pop it into their line. It’s a no-brainer. That improvement will give the company an edge over its competitors without a lot of risk. There is a much higher chance that the technology needed to make the product already exists, also.
Piggybacking on existing products is one of the best ways to begin inventing.
Stephen Key is a successful award-winning inventor who has licensedover 20 products in the past 30 years. He is a board member of Accudial
Pharmaceuticals and has a new book "One Simple Idea: Turn your dreams
into a licensing goldmine while letting others do the work" due to
release Spring 2011 from
McGraw-Hill. Along with business partner
Andrew Krauss, Stephen runs inventRight,
a company dedicated to education. Teaching inventors and entrepreneurs
the skills needed to successfully license their ideas. You can listen
to the weekly radio show on inventing.
Preorder One Simple Idea now and get access to our database of over 1300 companies looking for ideas.
Visit www.inventright.com to learn more.
