Bringing Your Product to Market ... In Less Than a Year

Chapter One

There are three types of inventions. The first is what I call technology-enhanced ideas, which are inventions that use current technology to improve existing products. For example, engineer Lonnie Johnson created the Super Soaker, those superpopular high-powered squirt guns, by borrowing industrial pumping technology to build air pressure and develop more thrust in a squirt gun. The second category, technology-created products, arises when a newly discovered technology leads to the development of entirely new products-such as Segway Human Transporters (those balancing two-wheel scooters by Dean Kamen), microwave ovens, and weed whackers. The first two categories are dominated by inventors with a technology background, typically not the everyday person. The third and by far the largest, category-end-user-dominated inventions-are new product ideas geared toward satisfying the people using the product. I've found that end-user-dominated inventions represent more than 80 percent, and probably mor ... read full excerpt from Bringing Your Product to Market...In Less Than a Year: Fast-Track Approaches to Cashing in on Your Great Idea ebook