A place for comments

If you wish to relate your Invention experiences to the rest of the group, feel free to do so by commenting here.

Steve

The Inventor’s Plight

Inventors for the most part all find themselves in a “plight”. Here's why.

Every inventor has given “birth” to a new idea, or device, or procedure or “thing”. Having given birth to an invention automatically links a person to humankind’s claim to fame and key to global domination: our inventiveness. There is almost a manifest directive concerning inventions, once invented an invention needs to be made available to all of mankind.

But:

Most inventors probably don't have all the resources needed to bring their idea to the public. (A lot of inventors don’t even have the resources to take their idea to the prototype phase.) This means they have to find funding, from those that have resources but not the idea/invention.

This means F&F, money people or corporations. F&F means friends and family. For most of us our friends and families don’t have any more resources than we do, so we’ll move on to the next group. Money people, as a rule, believe that they actually have something (money) as opposed to not much of anything (an idea), so the money people (if they can be found) almost always tricky to work with; not giving equal respect to the idea person. Corporations, on the other hand, not only have the same mind set as money people, corporations also have the problem of agendas. In other words there are within every corporation people that are already vying for the corporation’s resources to take on their own projects (which ostensibly ought to be money makers for the corporation).

Furthermore, ideas, probably because they can go nowhere without resources, are perceived of minimal value. It seems as if this leads society to the view that it's no big deal to steal an idea. (Evidence: look at the expense and troubles one has to go through to get marginal protection for an idea.) It is more than likely that if an idea is stolen from you, you will get blamed for not doing more to protect it. The poor inventor has to promote his idea while at the same time protect it from theft (which can only be done by keeping the idea secret.)

I can hear the objections to this last claim. But what about patents? What about non-disclosure agreements? What about…. We can save the deficiencies of these for another discussion.

The astronomical cost of Invention development: Ideas that can be produce in mass cheaply might be very expensive to prototype and test. So even before an idea can be prototyped, lots of money must be poured into the idea with the hope that the prototype proves the idea will work. And then even more money needs to be poured into idea to see if it will be a moneymaker in the market.

The problem of trailblazing: Anything that is new and original is instantly seen a risky, simply because, "nothing like it has ever been done before". Because it has never been done before, it might even be seen as being impossible to do. This makes getting supporter for new ideas extremely difficult to do (most of the time).

Humans are reluctant to change, and so they are reluctant to accept innovations, even very good ones. Sometimes it takes seeing a lot of other people trying a new thing before the bulk of humanity is ready to try that new thing.

The problem of specialized roles: Inventor types are one kind of person. It takes other types to get a new venture off the ground. It would be a rare inventor that can be all the things needed for a new companies launch. So the inventor has to find and attract these other kinds of people to his invention.

These are some of the factors that make up the Inventor’s Plight. Are you getting the idea of what I mean? If you can add to this list please comment.

Solutions?

What would I do to help inventors? One thing is I would organize the bridges (or build them is necessary), between inventors and angel investors. I would also do more to honestly and faithfully evaluate new inventions. I also would like to see a service of a 3rd party registration of ideas, similar to what the Writer's Guild of America has for scripts. (I think it would be easy for the patent office to have an official database of ideas and when they were thought up to protect inventors when they go around pitching their ideas in search of funding to move those ideas forward.


Steve

Exchange of thoughts

In addition to the links provided in the link section there is another place to go and read about American Inventor. Here's the link:

http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/11/american_inventor_reality_tv_m.html

Addendum to How American Inventor is Suppose to Run

Here's what another member of this group sent me about how the show will unfold:

"Nothing from these open casting calls was meant to be aired except for the optional interviews that took place, the "Atlanta!!" stuff the crowd yelled, and some of the walk around interviews they did in the waiting areas.

The actual idea pitches were only taped so the producers would have a face on tape later to match with the idea packets they collected. The first time interviews would be taped for airing would be at the "regionals" in mid Jan. This last bit comes from one of the production assistants, Tony."

How American Inventor is Suppose to Run

The first four episodes will consist of auditions, filmed at open calls this week in Los Angeles and San Francisco and continuing in Denver (Dec. 1), Chicago (Dec. 4), New York (Dec. 7), Washington (Dec. 11), Atlanta (Dec. 14) and Austin (Dec. 17) (Canceled).

The field will be narrowed to 100, then 9, who will get $50,000 to build a prototype and pitch their idea to a panel of judges in groups of three. Three finalists — one from each group — will then get $150,000 to film an infomercial. Viewers will pick the winner.

I would have loved to have known this Wednesday.

Steve

My experience of the audition - Atlanta 12-14-05

My alarm went off at 4:00am. I was glad I quit filling out application forms at 11:30 the night before. I left Lawrenceville for downtown Atlanta at about 5:15am and ended up with a parking deck time stamp of 6:09. When I got inside the Merchandise Mart, I was kind of taken aback by the number of people already cued up inside. From what I can calculate I must have been the 98th in line.

Right away I started being friendly with everyone in my immediate vicinity. The people in front of me were from Arizona, and the woman behind me was from New Orleans. There was a guy from Houston TX, and Lansing MI. I tell you, if half the people who auditioned in Atlanta were local that would surprise me. But most of the people I talked to that day were very charming and excited as I was to be there trying out for American Inventor.

First there was the congenial small talk. Then there was the ice breaking questions. Then offers to share scotch tape and clip boards and scout out the location of rest rooms and xerox machines and then watching over each other's "stuff". Of course we all passed along information about what was happening and how things were being done. We got to see some classic cattle heard mentality at work as late comers surged in to press to the front of the holding area because they failed to realize that the number on the little tickets we all got when we came in were the order in which people would be seen by the judges.

With so much time to kill, we got to the "I'll show you mine, and you show me yours" stage. Everyone was quite nice to let me do my little performance time and again. As time went on, we joked around and tried our pitches out on each other. By the time it was time to go in and do our pitches, we were in full blown support mode for each other. And when it was over, we were all wishing each other the best of luck and hoping that we'll be seeing each other again. They were so nice to hang around with I didn't want to leave when I did, but I had a philosophy cafe to go moderate. Now we'll be keeping in touch via email.

I found the production company and their leaders, the producers, to be exceptionally wonderful. They were very respectful and seemed to be very caring. Though they have a t.v. show to produce, they seemed to not lose sight of the fact that we all have our dreams for our inventions on the line. So much so that it is very hard to gauge who did well in their pitches with their inventions and who did not, because the producers were telling everyone that they all did well and their inventions were very good. They just were so very pleasant about everything. One of the main producers even came right out and told the whole group that they should be taking advantage of the opportunity to network with this assemblage of inventors that had gathered there that day. She said that more than anything that was probably of most value. I couldn't have agreed more with that advice. That's one of the reasons I want people to find this blog, so we can stay connected to each other as a bigger inventors community.

I did a small interview with "Wired" magazine and a photo shoot for them. "Wired" is going to run an article in March to coincide with the show being on the air.

How did I do?
I was a bit nervous, even though I have told people about my invention many many times. I got a bad case of 20/20 hindsight on the drive home and kept thinking of everything I didn't say that I should have said. I just wasn't as smooth as I could have been if the enormity of the whole thing had not been in the back of my mind.

T.V. is all agog over Inventors

There's a series on the USA channel, Made in the USA , there will be one coming to a PBS station near you, and next year ABC will have it's own reality show based around inventors and their inventions. You may find yourself and your invention on T.V. in front of millions of potential users of your invention.

Here's the question, is it a good thing to put yourself and your invention on the air?

I took a look at the fine print on the application for American Inventor. If you are the "winner" of that show what you win is an advance on future royalties of your invention. You get to keep all of one million dollars that your invention generates... anything above and beyond that one million dollars apparently goes tot he producers of the reality show because one of the things that winning wins you is the transfer of ownership of your invention from yourself to the producers of the show. In other words the producers pay you your prize out of your own royalties, keeping everything beyond that one million to themselves. No mention what happens if someone drops the ball and your invention never gets around to generating one million dollars in royalties, I guess you could end up having to pay back the deficit.

But that is a bit luckier than being one of the nine finalists… they get nothing and the producers holds a option to license their inventions for the period of one year.

I am currently trying to figure out if I really want to submit my latest invention to this contest... if I win, I may end up a bigger loser.