The conceptual stage of product concept design expands the innovation of the new product idea with practical engineering restraints for evaluation and delivery to a design for manufacturing process.
My Experience Notes and opinions for Individual Innovators
1- How does it work, what will it cost, and who is going to buy it. Know this before writing out any checks or taking out an equity loan to launch your new product idea.
2- Product ideas are only that. They are not much more than figments of our imagination. Bringing reality to them in most cases make them product concepts. How it works and what it looks like can be in many forms: imagination, sketches, computer models and prototypes.
3- No one should lose money investing in a product concept. All the innovators should do is show the idea works, determine how much it will cost to make, and determine how much the intended market will pay for it. Evaluation is not difficult to accomplish but is time consuming. But it is a lot more difficult to do than the careless route which is giving the ball to someone else to run with to deliver a garage full of product to you
4 - What is the idea, as a product, worth to prospective customers? All we need to do is ask them. There are many ways to do this and none of them require hiring a marketing survey service to get the answers. However, they are a good resource for corporations and businesses though. Simply identify one way or another a half dozen people who might be prospective buyers of your idea as a product and ask them for their valuable input. Nothing is more accurate than the number you get from someone who has a genuine interest in your idea.
5 - There’s a reason for determining the perceived value first. It brackets your thinking as to what it is and how sophisticated the product can be in appearance, function, and cost to manufacture. If the number you have been given for its perceived value is $20 and you intend to sell it at shows yourself, you must bring it in at half the cost. If you are going to supply retailers, you should bring it in at one quarter of the cost, or $5.00. If those fractions don’t work, your idea is not a good one, only because prospective customers will think it costs too much if you increase it beyond its perceived value.
6 - Knowing how many you may be able to sell is just as important. Quantity affects manufacturing cost. If there are ten million golfers in the country and you think you can reach ten percent of them, you have a number to work with. It might be ten percent over five years which gives you a number per year to work with. All markets can be identified for any new product idea and must be in-order to expect a good return on investment.
7 - Many people often say ideas are a dime a dozen. That’s true in a sense since a product idea is almost fiction until it is substantiated. Substantiation comes from ongoing innovation applying legitimate definition to the idea, thus making it a product concept. These are worth far more than a dime a dozen.
Provisional and Utility Patent Notes
1- Patents cost from five thousand dollars and up; way up! Most of the time on hind-site, they prove to be a poor investment. This can be confirmed just by reviewing patents, past and present, on the Internet and making note of the few we have seen as products. Few of them become products. Those that do become products, especially products that others want to jump in on, want to be protected by strong well-written patents, and many times in more than just our country as well.
2- It’s difficult to initiate a patent application before the engineering is complete and the idea concept is designed for manufacturing. If the patent attorney must continuously update his project, costs will become significant. It’s especially important to know your idea can not be improved, and is optimized, when you allow him to file for you.
3- Foreign patents are necessary for protection against duplication of product outside of our country. If we don’t mind someone capitalizing on our ideas outside of the country, and sales within the U.S. more than cover expenses to manufacture the idea product, we need not invest in foreign patents. Naturally, legal professionals know a lot more about this business than I do.
4- I sense many Provisional Applications for Patents are sent off with little care and attention to detail. I have found that most of what is required within the application must come from the innovator. After all, a patent attorney cannot read the mind of the originator of the idea. That being the case, I don’t see the need for a patent attorney when I file one. I don’t over-think the merits of the idea relative to being unique and useful. I only describe the idea enough so if it were ever examined, the examiner could turn the description, written and illustrated, over to a person skilled in the area of the invention, who would be able to produce a working representation of the idea. Care of accurate and complete content must be taken with these applications for them to have any potential merit if they are ever having to be used to settle disclosure disputes.
5- There is a cautious balancing act relative to a new innovative idea and Provisionals. Ideas require legitimate definition to make a filing worthwhile. Yet, many of us need the help of others to fully and accurately describe how an idea works as a product. Knowing we can trust people we know as friends who can help is a good start. Knowing we shouldn’t allow ourselves to trust people we don’t know is a good start as well.
6- Non-disclosure agreements are a must if we plan to talk with anyone relative to obtaining information that will make our ideas legitimate enough for a provisional application. Talking to people who might see the idea as something that would support their business might not be a good idea regardless of how good the NDA might be. Talking to someone who might be able to make some parts for you and is interested in nothing else, but more business may lead to bigger things.
7- I don’t think ideas or even idea concepts get stolen. They are too vague and require too much risk, work, and money to turn them into products. Products get stolen at the other end, where they can be "knocked off." The thieves can sell thousands of them before a court order prevents them from continuing. They can also have provisional patents filed, more accurate in description than the idea originators. They may have some subtle changes in their product, claiming the idea changes are patent worthy. They can fight attempts to stop them and will, especially when money is involved.
8 - Patent services are not in business to coach on the marketability of any new product idea. Their job is to write patents for ideas they feel are unique enough to be patented.
9 - When patents are issued, they fall under classification codes, listed at the end of the patent document. A new patent might fall under three or four codes because three or four parts of it are relative to what the codes represent. Patent searches can be conducted with these codes. They allow the innovator to find similar ideas that have been patented, record the codes, and search the patents under those codes.
10 - With a provisional and a working model, obtaining a good price from a patent attorney becomes much more likely. Also, less time of yours will have to be spent with him or her as well since the provisional and the working model will convey most of the idea. Talk in person to at least three. You may be doing this again with another idea, so select one you feel comfortable
with.
Invention Promotion Services
1 - I have never cared for invention promotion services that suggest they have customers waiting for new ideas. Fortunately, and only recently, how true that is or isn’t must be in print on their websites and publications. I feel promises to clients that licensees or retailers are waiting for the new product idea should be in writing along with penalty clauses if promises of delivery proves untrue; this is something that should be mandated by law.
2 - There are many successful and legitimate new product idea design services, some very large and some small, promising only to make your product idea as realistic and appealing as possible. They don’t, and never have promised to deliver it to waiting customers. That is up to the owner of the idea / concept / product.
3 - Design firms count on company representatives with budgeted dollars walking through their doors. Many companies don’t have the resources to look- into the expansion of their product lines. They count on outside product design services. It is not unusual for those accounts to reach six figures and sometimes even seven over a long period. I’m not sure how much serious attention an individual with limited resources should expect from design firms.
4 - Most innovators know from many hours of thought what their idea should look like and maybe even how it works. I’ve found most large design firms always have their own ideas about what it looks like and how it works.
5 - Knowing the cost you have in mind to produce your product makes you a more educated client when it comes time to select a design service. Anyone can design anything when cost is not a factor. Designing for a manufacturing price point is not a problem for a good designer working with you. The number must be adhered to. It can either be done or it can’t be, something you can know before spending any money. Products designers must be able to offer their clients practical creativity and more than average innovation from the start, to help bring the product in at cost.
Product Realization Risk Notes
1 - For every ten thousand ideas, maybe a thousand of them become concepts, one hundred of those become products, and with luck ten of them are deemed successful. I can't think of a positive way to convey this, but it's one of many notes I keep in my mind when reviewing a new product idea of my own.
2 - Staggering amounts of money have been lost investing in new product concepts. There is a staggering number of reasons why. Most of them are related to unrealistic profit expectations and the inventors ( me included ) not knowing what they don’t know.
3 - For some reason, partners are rarely sought. Regardless of who comes up with the idea, a good marketeer and a good engineer might make a powerful team, especially when it comes to minimizing program risk.
4 - I have found that once the middleman takes his cut for getting product manufactured off-shore, plus shipping and handling, the prices I get from good domestic companies are a better deal.
5 - Being able to identify a product with "Made in the USA" has major marketing advantages.
6 - Manufacturers, after they build the tools and run product do not ship to the intended market. They ship products that meets specifications to those that signed the purchase order.
7 - If there was a metric that could be used by all to determine the potential market worth of a new product idea, there would be far fewer poor investments by eager innovators; as a consequence, far fewer product development services, patent firms, and manufacturing resources would be in business as well.
8 - Product development services, patent firms, and manufacturing resources are legitimate by all standards. They do not have a responsibility to judge ahead of time how well a product idea will do on the market. They are not marketeers and any opinions they have relative to product potential would be subjective at best. They do only what they do well. Innovators are on the wrong side of the equation when it comes to risk, and the management of it.
9 - No one in the marketing and sales business can guarantee sales for the innovator; unless of course they know the product is a winner and retailers are lined up wanting to talk with them. They can’t guarantee success because they know they will have to return the fees for services if they don’t deliver for their clients.
10 - A new product concept should be a blessing, and not a curse for the innovator. The ideas usually don’t fall by the wayside but linger in the originator’s imagination. Not acting on it might be the loss of thousands of dollars when someone else comes up with the same idea and does something about it. Fear of losing everything if the idea bombs are always up front as well. Everyone has at least one idea flash and many of us have seen our ideas that are bouncing about in our procrastinating minds eventually end up a successful product through someone else’s efforts.
Licensors and Licensees
It’s difficult to interest a prospective licensee in your product concept if you don’t have something to bring to the table. Many products are logical candidates for licensing because of costs associated with manufacturing and design as well. A good up-upfront concept design done for presentation purposes can be used to reach a basic working prototype with additional attention to detail. This bare-bones model lacking bells and whistles will convey the idea. This type of model is far less sophisticated than a stage one prototype and therefore costs much less.
2 - If a prospective licensee can convince you to license a patented concept for a royalty of one percent of the selling cost, he will do it. Always go in for more than you know you can get. If they want it, they will counter-offer. Homework will tell you what the company can and should pay.
3 - In most cases, a licensee will want to be in charge of the product design around a new product concept to make sure it fits their product line theme. If the innovator intends to ultimately license the new product idea, anything more than functional design might be a poor investment.
4 - Few inventors realize what it costs to run a company that counts on product sales as revenues. Some believe that the company pockets 90 percent if they’re only paying out a 10 percent royalty. I suspect with all the known and unknown expenditures related to product realization, that sometimes the licensee actually makes less than the licensor.
5 - Some innovators / entrepreneurs invest only in limited inventory knowing there will not be a large profit margin. This allows them to market the product as well as the idea and patent at trade shows. This is a risk, but the chances are good that at least breaking even can happen.
The First Time Around
1- Know what your idea is, how it works, and if it has a realistic market.
2- Using the Internet, conduct a patent search making sure your idea is unique.
3- Sketch your idea completely and describe with diligence how it works for your provisional.
4- Using your ingenuity and imagination, fashion a breadboard that proves feasibility.
5- Find a source to construct a computer rendition ( basic shape ) of your idea as a product.
6- Line up a patent attorney if you think you will want one down the line.
7- Prepare a glossy printed promotional hand-out describing and displaying your idea.
8- Determine if your breadboard suffices for presentations or if an engineering model* is needed.
9- Identify and contact prospective licensees for manufacturing and marketing your product idea.
10- If no one is interested, drop the idea. If a qualified one is, visit and talk one-on-one.
11- Negotiate a contract for the time period, minimum sales, and a royalty payment percentage.
12- Commence with the writing of the patent once your licensee is under agreement.
* The more conceptual work done by the innovator, the fewer the hours of product design support will be when it comes to designing and constructing an engineering model.
