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Home > Free Info > Survival guide

Two Little Ducks: The rookie Inventor's Survival Guide

Got an idea?

There's no feeling more exciting than getting hold of a brand-new idea and realising that here, in your hands, is something that could change everything! It could be a gadget, a game, or a process. It doesn't have to be hugely expensive or Nobel-prize clever, it doesn't even have to be all your own work. It just has to be new, and useful, and practical.

You could be holding the Next Big Thing. You could be holding a fortune!

But after that first thrill, that first quiver of realization - what then? How do you turn a single idea, the first green shoot of creativity, into a real product, fixing real people's problems, and making real money for you? Here, we present a basic guide to turning your idea into the Next Big Thing, and to making your fortune.

Now what?

If you've had a good idea, there's money in it somewhere. If you can turn your good idea into a really dazzling, red-hot, shout-it-from-the-rooftops idea, then there will be tons of money hidden in it. But in order to get the money out, you need two things:

• you need to know the secrets and technique of making money from your ideas, and
• you need to roll up your sleeves and get on with it!

We can show you how to make your fortune, and we will pull with you as you do it. And once you know how to do it, you can keep creating fortune after fortune, time after time, using nothing more than your own ideas!

You've just had an idea!

I bet you're wondering: "How much is it going to make?"

Well, if you don't handle it right - nothing! There are a few things you must absoutely make sure of, to stand any chance of success. Read on!

Step 1: Don't tell anyone!

The first, and most important thing you must know about your idea: Don't tell anyone! This is really important: your idea only stays yours if you don't give it away. Many inventors don't even tell their spouses what they're up to! Whatever else you do, you must not, ever, discuss any aspect of your idea with anyone, ever, where you can be overheard. Not ever. You can be overheard when you're in the pub. You can be overheard when you use a cordless telephone. You certainly will be overheard if you use email. So, discuss your idea only in these circumstances:

• when you're in closed rooms or offices,
• when both of you are using digital telephones, or
• when you're encrypting your mail. (What's this mean?)
• And finally, most important of all:
• only when you completely believe, beyond any shadow of any doubt, that the person with whom you're discussing your idea is absolutely, totally honest and trustworthy.

Step 2: Pick a good codename:

Another thing you must consider is what codename to select for your idea, because sooner or later you will need to refer to it. The codename is one of three names you're going to need: the other two are the tradename, and the name of the Intellectual Property. Briefly

• the codename is a name which relates to the idea in some way, but which means something only to you
• the tradename is a name which describes the actual benefits of the idea, in a quick and easily-digestible way, and
• the intellectual property name is a name which describes exactly what the idea is, and roughly how it works.

So, for example, I might pick a codename of "Silver" (which was the name of a famous horse, but isn't obviously horsey), a tradename of "Twinkletoes", and an IPR name of "A safety device for illuminating horses hooves for use on unlit roads" You can see that the IPR name completely gives away the idea, but Twinkletoes is not much better - it rather suggests the idea, and (if you knew it might be something to do with horses) you could take a reasonable guess what it was. Silver tells you absolutely nothing, but I'm unlikely to forget what it means - so it's a very good codename.

Incidentally, you might like to know that, during Second World War, Germany developed a rangefinding device which enabled them to target bomb drops very accurately. The allies noted the increase in accuracy, and then, through good intelligence, discovered the codename, which was actually the name of a Greek god who could see forever. Armed with nothing more than this legendary name and a cluster of explosions, the allied engineers, led by Robert Watson Watt, set to work to figure out what on earth the Germans could possibly have developed. What they came up with was Radar! Funny thing was, that's not what the Germans had at all! The allies learned about a key German weapon, and got a pivotal piece of technology into the bargain, all because of a careless choice of codename! Pick your codenames carefully!

Step 3: Stick to what you know!

There's one more thing which you really need to consider at this very early stage. Your invention, and the problem that it solves: are they something you know anything about? Is this a real problem that real people experience? What kinds of solutions do those people use now? Do they really have the problems, or have they found ways of avoiding the problems altogether?

You see, time after time, inventors solve problems that simply don't exist!

• I've seen someone invent a new machine for laying paving, because he had no idea how the job was actually done! The machine was completely useless!
• I've seen someone invent a new kind of container for products they've never actually seen or used. The container didn't even work!
• I've even seen people invent gadgets and then go looking for applications - and then try to tell customers that the applications they've found are fixing problems they've never even had!

If you step outside your own experience, you're likely to stumble past the real problems, and you'll miss all the good solutions. Even worse, when the time comes to manufacture and distribute your solution, you won't know any of the important companies and you'll be mystified by the peculiar way the industry does things. You'll feel like an outsider, banging on the door to be let in.

The world is sufficiently full of problems that you don't need to invent new ones! So, unless you're an expert at laying paving slabs, how can you possibly understand what problems the experts have? If you haven't tried to package those exotic products, how can you know what the professionals find hard? Before you even begin to invent solutions, it makes sense to find out all you can about the problem. The easiest way to do that is: stick to what you know.

Remember:

The Innovation lifecycle.

How rich could your idea make you? Imagine, for a moment: can you see yourself using your invention? Can you imagine how your life would be different when the problems which your invention solves simply disappear out of your life? If you can, that's good, because that means that probably there are lots of other people with the same problem, and they'd be happy to buy your invention so they could disappear their problems too!

So, you can get incredibly rich out of inventing, and every invention starts with an idea. But - understand this - an idea isn't at all the same thing as an invention! Anyone can have ideas - ideas are the cheapest things an inventor has! Good inventors can come up with twenty great ideas a day! (How do they do it? I'll tell you about that in a moment!) But you can't get rich out of an idea alone - nobody buys ideas, and nobody even backs them. An idea has no commercial value whatever! If you want to make money from your idea, you have to grow it, develop it into something more.

Every idea, yours included, earns money for its inventor in the same way. It gets turned into a product, and the product sells. There are almost as many different kinds of sales as there are products: some inventions sell to the public in large volume from shops and supermarkets, some sell in ones or twos in huge business-to-business deals, some are sold specifically to be given away - and some are sold simply to be thrown away! But whatever the sales model, before your invention can make you any money, somebody, somewhere, must buy it. And your job, as the inventor, is to turn your idea into something that can sell. You're going to have to think about prototyping, patenting, production engineering, business modelling and financial planning, distribution and sales, and even recycling. That's a lot of things to consider!

All about business.

Your invention needs to sell, and that means: business. It could be your business, or it could be someone else's. But business is involved somewhere. Business means manufacturing, distribution, and marketing. It might involve after-sales effort, and (becoming more and more important these days) end-of-life recycling.

It really doesn't matter whether you're going to build your own business around your idea, or whether you're going to sell your idea to another company. The fact is you're going to be dealing with sophisticated, experienced, professional, intelligent businessmen - so you'd better either learn a little about business, or get someone on your side who is as experienced as they are! Either way if you're going to earn anything out of your idea, you're going to have to be professional and businesslike - why would anyone want to do any business with you if you're not as professional and businesslike as they are?

Any business, (if you've got any sense, yours included) will look at an invention in the same way. Firstly, they'll let you try to show them how good your idea is. They'll look at your idea - at your product - and they'll imagine all those people queuing up to solve their problems, just the same as you did. If you're right about the problems (and if they've got the vision) they'll get as excited as you!

But then they'll do something else: they'll turn their entire attention completely around, and they'll try to figure out all the ways it could go wrong! It's a sort of competition - a game. You see, if they can think of just one thing that could go wrong, and that you haven't already accounted for, then they're going to drive your price down, and they're going to be pretty happy that they've won! If they come up with something so big that it's a "showstopper" then they're going to be delighted that they're smarter than you, that they've saved all the costs and time of launching a dead duck, and you're going to be left with nothing! It's a very strange sort of game, because they want to find a really new idea, and they're really hoping that what you're explaining to them is it. On the other hand, they also want to find fault, and if they manage to break your idea, they win that way too!

Every day, in offices all over the world, amateur inventors blindly stumble into this game, completely unaware of what is going on. At best, they come out with no deal and their dreams in tatters. At worse, they're ripped off by scamsters who take them for thousands of pounds and give the whole inventions industry a bad name - I'll tell you more about them in a moment.

But serious, professional inventors love this game! They know how the game is played, they can imagine every objection before their opponent has even thought of any, and they have their answers already set out in front of them. A professional inventor has already seen all the cards!

Getting professional help.

There are lots of organisations out there who are happy to help inventors develop their ideas. There are specialist prototyping and model-making companies who understand the needs of inventors (some of them are listed on our partners page). There are patent attorneys who are prepared to do some of the work for free, and there are firms of lawyers and accountants who will set up deals without asking for payment, safe in the knowledge that you're going to use them to manage the deals once they're up and running. There are even inventions agents, who can introduce you to prospective manufacturers and licensees.

But, what none of these people will tell you, and what you absolutely have to know about, is this: your invention needs you far more than it needs any of these other people. If you don't believe in your idea so much that you want to get involved from the very beginning, and stay involved, through its development and success, right through to the very end, why on earth should anyone else? I'll tell you this: if I gave something of mine worth a million pounds to someone - anyone - I'd be watching them like a hawk 24 hours a day! Why would you entrust your baby, your fortune, and your reputation to anyone else, and then walk away?

So, you can tell who you can rely on, and who your friends are, by using this simple test. Do they say something like:

• "Leave it all to us! Give us what you've got, and we'll call you back when we've done." They won't. If you're leaving it to them, you're turning your back. You can't be bothered to look after your property, and they know it! If the idea has got any merit, they'll punt it to their friends and you won't get anything, and if it doesn't have any merit they'll just keep your money and do nothing.
• "We're professionals, we get paid by the hour/by the job." Then they're not interested in the success or failure of your project, they're only interested in how many hours they can spend working on it. Anybody can keep working as long as you have funds to pay them!

Of course, you should also check out whether the company has a known history of malpractice. We dish all the dirt here.

So, it's very wise to use professionals, but be very careful about which professionals you use. Choosing your commercial partners is a big decision! Do you trust them to be honourable? Do you trust them professionally? Do you trust them to stick around for the duration of the ride? Whatever else you do, keep your eye on them all the time. And, of course, you owe it to yourself to learn at least a little about how they do what they do, so you understand what you need to be keeping your eye on! Learning those skills is part of learning how to be a professional inventor.

So. here's the deal:

Get the show on the road!

So, if you've got an idea, and you seriously want to turn it into an invention, you're going to need to know all the twists and turns of the inventing business. We're here to help you get started, and we've prepared a range of information depending on what you want to do.

Option 1: The Kick-start guide

Option 2: Black-belt inventor's training

Option 3: One-on-one consultancy