Just how does a novel idea become a new product or service? Graham Barker and Peter Bissell explain how to make this process easier, pointing out potential pitfalls and offering practical help.
From the Post-it note to Trevor Baylis’s Clockwork radio, many best sellers would never have seen the light of day without the hard work and perseverance of their creators. The journey from idea to commercial reality is often a difficult one, but here, designers, businesses and lone inventors can learn how to safeguard their ideas, find out where to get funding and who to talk to for more information.
The essentials of invention
Invention is a creative adventure that starts with an original idea and ends, if all goes well, with the market launch of a novel or radically improved product or process. It’s an adventure that rarely goes smoothly and often ends unhappily. None the less, much of the UK’s economic strength can be traced back to the solo efforts of inventive individuals.
Most significant inventions now appearing on the market are a marriage of inspired thinking and elegant design. It's probably not commercially possible to have it any other way, as today's quality-conscious markets have long lost their tolerance of revolutionary but bug-ridden or 'clunky' technologies.
There's also much less room for the really big invention. James Dyson didn't invent the vacuum cleaner and Apple didn't invent the computer. They invented improvements involving new or unconventional uses of both technology and design.
Invention and design
What Apple, Dyson and other innovators did was reinvent through design. Design is fundamental to invention and is the key to turning a prototype into a marketable and backable product. It's vital to think about design from the very start, as the true value of an invention may not be spotted if it's obscured by an impractical or inappropriate design.
A designer’s input to the invention process can be invaluable, particularly when dealing with manufacturers, who need both detailed specifications before they can make or quote for anything and access to someone who talks their language if problems arise.
Read more about this subject on from Business Link, with advice on how to manage your research, design and development.
Improving your invention’s chances of success
At the invention stage, it can be easy to miss the latent value in a raw idea, particularly if it’s poorly presented by a novice inventor. Many inventions need radical redesign to meet production and marketing requirements. Companies would therefore do well to involve designers - who are trained to look for improvement potential - from the outset when assessing external or internal inventions. Equally, inventors would do well to seek the advice of designers to improve their presentations to companies or investors.
Exploiting designer's invention for business success
Designers are obviously in a good position to be inventors themselves, but they can also help in the process of identifying potential in other people's often very raw ideas. Designers might consider seeking out early stage inventions to ‘adopt’, for example by joining an inventors’ club or by contacting the patentee of a promising but so far unexploited idea (published patents include applicant names and addresses). Through outstanding design, a designer could help to differentiate and even protect an invention that can’t be strongly protected by patent. Making good design a priority throughout development can greatly improve an invention's chances of attracting serious commercial interest.
Want to know more about protecting the intellectual property developed during a design project? Read our one-pager on Intellectual Property.
Where next?
Eureka is a pan-European network for encouraging market-oriented, collaborative research and development projects, which lead to the development of innovative products, processes or services.
ideas21 is the UK's fastest growing network devoted to invention and innovation. It brings together inventors, patent professionals, companies and innovation support organisations.
Businesslink offers help and advice for inventors and innovators.