Being Original Ain’t Easy
By Jack Lander
Before my friend Paul retired he was a book producer. He spent much of his workday analyzing the kinds of books that were selling well. His objective was to find a gap among them — an opportunity for another book.
When he identified a gap he would evaluate it critically. And when he was sure that the book that would fill the gap would sell and make a significant profit, he’d produce a book proposal.
He started the proposal process by outlining the book and creating a title for it. Then, he’d find the right author for it and work out an agreement.
If the book would be more successful with illustrations, he’d hire an illustrator to create a few representative drawings or photos. He’d also select the most appropriate publisher. Finally, he’d create a “dummy,” which, in inventor lingo, is a prototype.
Paul would then take his prototype to his first-choice publisher and make his pitch. Most of the time he ended up with a licensing agreement. And that’s how he made a comfortable income.
I asked Paul two questions about his process:
- What percentage of the gaps that he identified did he turn into proposals?
- What percentage of the proposals did he license?
To the first question he answered, “Maybe one in 10.” And to the second question, “About 80%.”
This means that he had a success ratio of around 8%.
Now we’re in the ballpark with the average success claimed for inventions. Well, sure, we often hear that only about 2% of inventions earn more than their cost. But I’ve never believed that the figure is really that low.
And even if it were, it’s a figure from a time years ago before the invention “game” got as hot as it is today. It’s from a time when most inventors had no idea of what to do next after the great eureka moment, or how to market their invention if they did develop it.
The lesson here is that 92% of Paul’s great ideas were failures. Ouch. That’s a bad choice of words. Let’s say, rather, that he had a 90% discard rate, and an 80% success rate. And this is a perfectly good model for us inventors.
It’s OK to be infatuated with our great ideas. But in most cases, let’s get over the infatuation phase before it leads to true love.
First, be sure that you’ve found a gap – in other words, a market need. Don’t invest a lot of time or any money on your latest brainstorm until you determine whether the idea already exists as a product, or whether it has been patented.
These two tests won’t guarantee that there is no prior art. Products sometimes come into existence and fade away without leaving an easily discoverable trail. And as the late cosmologist, Carl Sagan, has said, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
But much or most of the time we can rule out our originality by finding that another inventor has preceded us with the gap invention for which we were so hopeful.
The concept of the patent search is well understood by most inventors today – even those who have never decided to go forward with their ideas. But the product search is not yet widely used.
At one time I had a great “discard invention.” A friend who had arthritis in her hands couldn’t open food cans with her conventional manual opener. So, I fabricated a crank handle with extra long leverage and attached it to her conventional can opener.
I imagined a market for people who had similar difficulties in opening cans. No doubt I could reach them through several catalogs.
But in doing a search on Amazon.com, I found 88 manual can openers, several of which had crank handles. You don’t see them for sale in your local supermarket, but they exist. Amazon even offers the Edlund can opener for $1,304, and several others in the $300 to $400 range. The list of all kinds of can openers totals 258. Incredible!
So, a search of an existing product should be our first discard test – even before a patent search. I’m sure you know, but I’ll repeat it here: any public disclosure of your invention by anyone, anywhere, at any time, forecloses you from patenting what you thought was your invention.
If you thought that you had invented a new kind of spear and that same spear had been painted on the wall in King Tut’s tomb 35 centuries ago it would constitute prior art.
Much of our conditioning about what commonly exists comes from what we observe for sale in stores, what we see in ads and what we and our friends own.
My “novel” can opener with the long crank handle was only novel in my imagination. A search of Amazon.com soon disillusioned me.
If I hadn’t done the product search first, but had taken the longstanding traditional route of a patent search, I would have spent at least $250 only to discover the same result – prior art (Marta Brucart Bonich had applied for the patent back in 2005, Application # 2005/0198838).
It’s really difficult to be original. And it can be expensive and depressing to invest money and a lot of emotional energy only to discover that our latest great idea was invented some time ago.
The lesson to be learned is that to discard our great ideas is the common experience, not the exception.
And as a common experience we’ve got to suck it up.” We’ve got to accept that most of our ideas will be discarded because of prior art. And rather than bemoan our idea’s fate, we should move on to our next great idea.
As discarding of ideas early in the invention process becomes our accepted routine, we may find satisfaction in the total process. With each discard we increase our intuition and we sense that we are moving closer to success.
Editor’s note: This article appears in the February 2011 print edition.
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