Re: The job I hated which taught me valuable lessons about "creative" type people..

> Yes.... As I listened to the presentation I
> wrote about a couple nights ago, I was
> thinking to myself.... These people need a
> service like that!

That's what I thought, until I encountered a lot of entrenched attitudes that reinforced the idea, "What people NEED and what people WANT can be entirely different."

> Another very short presentation I saw at the
> Inventors' Association meeting was of an
> older product (14 years old, he said), which
> had taken off, then died, but now seemed
> like it might be taking off again...

> He called it an "electronic dog."
> That is, it's a kind of detector hooked up
> to a recording or simulator of a dog
> fiercely barking.... I thought it was a nice
> idea to scare away unwanted intruders....

Older products are probably a good source of products to control a la Joe Cossman. ARF! ARF! a la Pluto.

they believe the MYTH of
> "Build a better mousetrap, and the
> world will beat a path to your
> door"....

And they fall in love with their IDEA of their invention, often not allowing tweaking and peaking to make it more marketable!

> But we know this old saying is NOT TRUE!

> Marketing is at least as important as the
> product, if not more so....

MORE SO . . . nothing happens 'til a sale is made!

> Thanks Bob, that was a great post.... :)

And thank you, Dien for a great follow-on post:-)

Bob