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Class in Session
By Ivan Cacic
Shortly after the “Eureka!” moment, the first thing many new inventors often think of doing is obtain a patent, make prototypes or crank up manufacturing.
However, most will soon realize they lack the knowledge, skills, experience or money to do all this, particularly with inventions that require considerable research and development.
Some inventors may get a helping hand from their employers. However, as a rule companies only support innovations at are directly related to their current business. Moreover, inventions created on company time with company resources most likely will belong to the company.
Other inventors may turn to any number of innovation brokers, product-development firms or invention submission companies. Save for inventor-friendly, low-cost platforms such as Edison Nation, which hosts Live Product Searches to help companies find innovations through a network of inventors, many companies may charge steep and/or escalating fees for their services.
Disincentives to nurture innovation seem to outnumber incentives.
Considering the circumstances, one promising potential method of protecting and marketing inventions would be a system that combines patenting and marketing with education and training at colleges and universities. A sort of curriculum for inventing.
This could start with the establishment of foundations within institutions that will promote inventions and support them financially and technically to successful launch. Ideally, the process would be financially self-sufficient.
The basic idea is to have courses for undergraduate and postgraduate students who have ideas that have been screened for market potential. Such courses also could be open to non-students willing to submit their ideas for patenting through the program. The student or student-inventor would take all required courses and at the same time be involved in all aspects of the invention process, including:
– Evaluation of the initial concept for the invention
– Making a prototype to test the new product or technology
– Starting the patent application process, including preparing all required paperwork
– Marketing through direct negotiation with potential buyers or support of production start-up and direct marketing or marketing through distributors
Educational institutions could enter into partnerships with companies and government institutions or agencies. This might be required if the invention requires equipment and facilities that are beyond the capacities of the college.
Universities would finance part or all expenses through the foundation. This could include scholarships for some students.
By taking these courses, students would actively participate in and gain knowledge and first-hand experience of the whole inventing and patenting process. By gaining understanding of the invention process, they’d become far more likely to work on their own inventions later.
The benefits of a practical inventor curriculum are manifest. More inventions could come to fruition. Talented inventors would be able to learn and practice the inventing process and apply what they have learned to their own ideas, regardless of their financial status. And their successful first-hand experience would better prepare them to be entrepreneurs and more valuable employees.
Meanwhile, the better the inventions produced from universities and colleges with an inventing curriculum, the better the quality of students and faculty they could attract. These schools likely would be funding magnets for corporations and philanthropists as well.
In the end, the creation of an inventing curriculum could have a flywheel effect, with an increasing number of successful inventors spinning off an increasing number of successful products and technologies, in turn driving greater visibility and funding to the educational institutions that produced these successful inventors.
Editor’s note: This article appears in the March 2011 print edition.
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