Ideas about medical devices, grand illusions of creating the next big energy source, even bar napkins full of sketches of new transportation devices. For some reason novice inventors always want to make it so complicated.
I’m not saying people don’t have the mental strength to invent these things, or even that they shouldn’t. What I am saying is one of the hardest parts of this process – and yes, Inventing is a process – is to stay focused, and we all know how hard that is for most inventors.
But fear not – We have a few tricks to help, at least when you are first starting out.
First: Always work in an area of inventing that you may know something about. For example, if your hobby or job has given you a fair amount of experience in the construction business you may want to start your first invention in that industry. This can give you a leg up in the sense that you know what the problems are and you have a readymade group of people to work with. If you have never been in the construction business it would be difficult to understand the nuances that go with that trade, and thus difficult to invent a useful solution for them.
Second: Keep it as simple as you can and work your way up. Find a nice everyday problem to tackle and invent a solution to it.
Third: Always make one invention pay for the next. Sure, document every idea in an inventor’s notebook – but for those you choose to move forward with, the ones you choose to spend your family’s money on, make those raise the funds necessary to finance your next invention.
This is very important; by using mechanisms like these you commit yourself to picking only your strongest ideas. This makes sure you stay on a track of progress, not just flail around from idea to idea spending money.
That´s almost all correct. Except when reducing the knowledges to the inventors work.
ReplyDeleteMost people have an hobby and several times they even know more about their hobby than they do about their work.
So I think that the correct thing to recomend is that new inventors should focus on a subject that they know about... either its work or not. And I would add the following. Search and research every aspect of your field, and search a patent database right before you develop your idea. that will prevent you from working on something that already exists.
The patent search may take several months... but there's no other way to be sure.
regards
JP