Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I have been a part time inventor for a number of years.    I am looking for a decent way to assess these ideas to establish which one to run with.  I do not have a whole lot of free time.  I am curious as to how other successful inventors go through the process.  Thoughts that come to mind -

1. Market size
2. Patentability
3. Ease to take it to the next step
4. Just grab one, get a provisional patent and try to sell it. Repeat until successful

Any thoughts would be appreciated

Hi Sandbox,

I have struggled with the same thing in the past. I have my own criteria given my specific experience with certain industries, however, I found this article helpful in creating a better 'idea filter' for myself.

http://www.ideabuyer.com/news/5-steps-to-evaluating-a-patent-idea/

Basically, it boils down to demand, ability to do something with it, patentability, etc. Worth the read.

I am a contract engineer and I am new to this community. If you have any questions, let me know. I work primarily in the 'hand tool' market but I do have a lot of experience with engineer and doing my own patent searches.

My criteria,

Is it a "WOW" idea?

Large market or one that is growing?

Cost/Risk Analysis

Barriers to entry?

Pick your best opportunity and go for it!

Best of success

Doug

DOug,

thanks for the input and encouragement.  Plan to grab the top two and run with them.  I added ease to run with as one of the criteria in hopes of getting started.  If I faill, I will fail faster. 

All the best

Sean

Hi Sean, I hope we're on the same page.  I meant to pick your best opportunity when it came to your many ideas.  Not just two of the four criteria I listed.  You especially need to consider cost/risk analysis and even barriers to entry.

Hi Sandbox,

I've been away from the forum for awhile but just re-activated my membership.  Hopefully, I can give you some good advice. Basically, the three critical criteria for pursuing any of your invention ideas are:

1. Does it solve a problem that has a large demand for a solution.

2. Is it profitable?  Can you 6x the manufactured cost to end user price.

3. How strong is your competition.

This gives you a framework to go to the next step which is to determine how you would go about protecting and marketing your inventions - each having it's own set of criteria.

Hope this helps,

Randy Belaire

Like many innovations, demand is hard to gauge since the new product has never been seen by the public before. From a novelty point of view, many big ideas are successful, how do you estimate that?  Yes, making improvements to a similar product is easier to estimate potential demand, but most of my innovations are somewhat unique, so it's much more difficult to "justify" the demand in my mind..... as it's only my opinion, which could be a bit biased.  Wouldn't it be interesting to have a group of 25 people for a "new idea focus group" to give their opinion on random new ideas (which have provisional patents submitted of course). I plan to join an inventor's forum, maybe that will help me bring my ideas "down to earth".