Patience, professionalism & intellectual property – skills  all inventors must master

By Karen Norris

Many might find the patience aspect the most challenging.

Whether it is waiting for a licensing deal to be executed, a prototype to be completed, or the first sample to come off the production line, when getting involved in the inventing business you must be prepared for a marathon, and not the 50-yard dash.

And for those who choose Edison Nation as their inventing path…waiting is a very familiar part of their inventing experience. However, it is the waiting (to see if your idea is selected) that works to keep the social community so active and supportive.

Edison Nation is the leading online community and resource dedicated to inventors and idea people to help independent inventors get their ideas, products and patents commercialized.

The innovators whose products are selected to take to market receive a $2,500 advance and up to 20 years of annual payments. However, before they can reap the reward, innovators must patiently wait as their ideas progress and pass through eight stages.

Stage 1 Submission Received

Stage 2 Pre-Screen

Stage 3 Initial IP

Stage 4 Research & Design

Stage 5 Final Consideration

Stage 6 Final IP Review

Stage 7 Finalists

Stage 8 Success

Not Selected/you will see a red X over that stage.

The final stage (before being selected for product testing) is affectionately termed “G7” by staff and the user community. G7 is when the Edison Nation team works to identify the ideal prospective partners for submitted ideas. The G stands for ‘Green’ (your idea is proceeding), verses the alternative, an R7 where R signifies Red or the stage your idea was stopped.

Even after being selected as a finalist, a lucky “G7”, the Edison Nation Licensing team can take up to six months to find a home for your product after it becomes a finalist. This is the stage with the longest wait.

Those who use Edison Nation are all too familiar with the wait and often joke with each other about being ‘addicted’ to watching their dashboards progress through the eight stages. Some users return to the site every hour to see if their dashboards have changed.

A thread was created on the site’s chat forum addressing this addictive behavior and we’ve reprinted this humorous posting here for several reasons:

1)    To warn you of the potential addiction risk to Edison Nation

2)    To give you a taste of the bonding and tight-knit social experience you might look forward to on the site

3)    Lastly, to allow this article to serve as a reminder to work to ‘practice patience’. The patience you experience when waiting on Edison Nation’s dashboards can be considered a taste of the patience you’ll require when working to bring your ideas to market on your own!

This thread is dedicated to those of us who are addicted to our ideas and also to Edison Nation.

Please introduce yourself and sign-up for the 12 Step Program.

Step 1: Be happy with what is, not what could be.

Open a kitchen cabinet or draw and resist the temptation to look at all the gadgets and think about how they might be improved… Start by getting through one meal a day simply enjoying how things work today and not how they might reengineered some day in the future….

Step 2: Once a day dashboard reviews.

While it is true that from 1:01pm to 1:02pm your dashboard might change—you must show restraint. For the first week try visiting your dashboard only once-a-day, instead of every hour, on the hour…

If this change is too much, first start by cutting back to am and pm viewings only.

Step 3: Speak free.

Remember the days when you would throw out an idea at the dinner table? Talk about your hit innovation over the holidays with a group of strangers? Are you walking around the house with NDAs in your pocket? Reclaim your freedom. This week speak openly about an idea without the fear that someone will submit a PPA three minutes later.

Step 4: Put the highlighter down.

It’s OK to read Inventors Digest just for pleasure every once in a while. Put the highlighter away… Just once read it through without ripping out a page or adding a resource to your to do list.

Step 5: Get in touch with your feelings.

Instead of your normal quick posting, “out at R6, done at R7”, let it out once in a while, say what you really mean… i.e. “How could they not see this idea for the genius it is!”, “Great, now I have to go to work again on Monday”, “I waited 12 months for this dream idea to make it, now what”. Get it out, express your R’s.

Step 6: Talk Out loud.

If you’ve talked to your thumbnail photo friends more than your family (or personal friends) it may be time to pick up the phone. Hear a voice, speak out loud, remember what it was like to hear an instant response and not wait for a post reply.

Step 7: Buy Something Fun for $20.

Remember when $20 bought you movie tickets or lunch… clothing or home purchases? Instead of your next $20 going to yet another idea submission, stop for a moment and just buy something fun.

Step 8: Sleep is Sleep.

When you lay your head down on the pillow remember that it should signal that it is time to sleep and not time to think of new product names and inventions. For one week in a row forbid yourself to think of new ideas when the lights go out.

Step 9: Remove LPS Pressure.

It’s OK to skip a live product search. Stop. Breathe. Repeat it with me, “it is OK to skip a search”…once in a while it is OK to let a search go by without a submission. This will take time, but maybe you start by letting the ‘automatic talking parrot that irons your clothes’ idea go and wait for true inspiration…

Step 10: Do Not Reinvent The Steps.

If you are reading these steps, thinking about new, novel, unobvious ideas on how to improve the steps you have a true problem! Do not rework or add figure diagrams to these steps, this will contradict all other progress.

Step 11: Acceptance.

The sooner you accept that EN staff will not call you to personally say how brilliant your idea was; that a search will not progress to G8 in two weeks; if your idea was the one that ‘almost’ made it, the calmer you will be…

Step 12: But Wait, There’s more…

Nope, not here! Step 12 is simply step 12. You don’t read the 12 steps and then get another 12 steps for free. There is no extra incentive. It doesn’t matter if you respond to this in the next five minutes. This is just 12 steps plain and simple. Learn to accept that not everything will come in doubles with free random gift items…

Print. Execute. Look forward to violating all steps with you all in the future.

Editor’s note: This article appears in the April 2011 print edition.

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