This is something inventors - and everyone else - ought to know....

A couple of nights ago I went to the Inventors' Association Meeting in Melbourne, Australia....

There's quite an overlap between what many inventors want to do, and what many entrepreneurs want to do....

The main difference is that the inventor wants to create a physical product himself (almost all seem to be guys)..... While the definition of an entrepreneur is more diverse....

One inventor gave a talk at the meeting about his own inventions. He had some small successes, and many failures....

He said overall, he had about broken even regarding the money he had outlaid over the years, and the money he had brought in....

I thought there was a lot in his approach which could be improved....

His approach was that he would first think up some kind of device to make.

For example, one of the devices he had created in the past was a kind of alarm to protect fire extinguishers from being stolen.

Then he would figure out the technical details.... how to create it.

After going through all that WORK, TIME, and MONEY to make it, THEN he would see if there was a market....

I think he would have done MUCH better, if he had changed the order of things he was doing....

First, think up what he could make....

Then, see if there is a market!

And finally, only if there seems to be a market for the product, then spend all the WORK, TIME, and MONEY to create it!

No use spending all that WORK, TIME, and MONEY unless you already know that a market exists for the product....

I think he could have done much better if he had taken this approach, and done market testing much earlier on in his process....

Anyhow, it was interesting to go to the meeting. Many inventors could really use some education about marketing and the importance of market-testing....

That is, if they want their inventing to go beyond a hobby (and almost all of them do)....

I found this interesting.... After hanging out in these kind of forums, and reading all these books, thinking like this is now second-nature to me.... But to many people it's not obvious....

Dien Rice