Our industry is filled with talented, creative, hard-working and hands-on professionals who have many brilliant ideas. But because pool professionals don’t always have a clear process to innovate in their businesses, learn to patent, or protect and monetize their ideas, many innovations never make it to market or get gobbled up by bigger players.
Most people underestimate their creativity, productive capacity, intelligence and full potential. Even for our team at Thursday Pools, it took several tries before we established a formal process that allowed us to successfully bring new, innovative ideas that we turned into patent-protected products we could manufacture. We studied and adopted steps used by firms in a variety of industries.
We decided we want to share these processes with our industry colleagues so they can avoid costly mistakes or risk being swindled by marketing scams. We recently began doing this through seminars at various trade shows. This article is written to provide some of the information from our seminar.
Ideas into business opportunities
As soon as a person starts thinking about creating a new product or service, they have begun Step 1 of the Thursday Pools process: The Intent-to-Invent step. This is the beginning of a possibly long process that can take many years. Searching for instant gratification or a “get rich quick” scheme is the enemy of realizing the dream of bringing your product to market. As with most worthwhile ventures in life, it is important to start with desire and then realize your goals with persistence.
First, let me explain a little bit about the process of bringing a new product to market. The key is to gain patent protection.
First, you must verify that your idea is unique. You can perform this step yourself by going to the United States Patent and Trademark Office website (uspto.gov/), or work through an attorney. Depending on factors such as the region of the country and the individual attorney, I would say that could cost approximately $1,500.
After determining you have a unique idea, you would file for a provisional patent. This low-cost option gives inventors a year of protection so they have time to file the sometimes-extensive paperwork needed for a non-provisional, 20-year patent. With an attorney, the provisional patent would likely cost at least $2,000. This protects your idea, so any contractors, vendors or potential investors you work with cannot claim your idea.
At this stage, if you haven’t found an attorney, now you should. In the upcoming year, the inventor must file the paperwork and drawings, if necessary, to apply for the non-provisional patent. This would cost several thousand dollars.
You also would embark on market testing to make sure there is demand for the product. And you would create prototypes and conduct field testing to find out if any fine-tuning is needed.
Once you’ve secured your patent, you will reach a fork in the road, where you must make the decision that will determine the road ahead for you and your invention: Do you want to take the product to market yourself, or sell the idea and patent to a manufacturer? Furthermore, if you decide to produce and market the product, will you need investors?
Keys for successful inventions
At Thursday Pools, we wanted to provide a structure to the process of bringing products to market, as well as establish a culture of invention. To do this, we created a 10-ingredient recipe to guide our team to a successful product launch.
1. Intent-to-invent mindset. If you are interested in habitually bringing new products to market, you must be actively thinking and looking for something to invent. Once you have the idea, get excited and get ready to start a structured approach to getting the product to market.
2. Solve problems. Customers generally are looking for something that will solve a problem, so be sure your idea will do that or make life easier for builders, retailers, service professionals or consumers.
3. Desire. Nothing beats the high of getting a good idea. But there will be many roadblocks as you seek to bring your product to market. Be sure you are passionate about your invention and have a deep desire to see it brought to market — you will need this to keep going and to get through challenging times.
4. Persistence. This is as critical as passion. Don’t give up when refining your product or service. Going back to the drawing board multiple times is common and most likely necessary. As you spend time examining the product and the market, you will likely find ways to improve on your idea — and you might even happen upon a new and better idea along the way!
5. Protections. This is one of the most important keys. If you have a winning product, make sure you start down the patent process before you go to market.
Before enlisting the help of anyone besides an attorney, inventors should obtain their provisional patent. This prevents others, such as vendors and other collaborators, to use your idea.
When you find collaborators or investors, also have them sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. This is especially necessary if you are still building your prototype and don’t have a provisional patent yet — maybe you don’t want to spend the thousands of dollars until you know it will work.
Beware of unethical invention marketing companies. You might see them in television commercials or books about inventing. They may seem like an ideal way to sidestep attorneys’ fees. Before we started Thursday Pools, I went this route once in the hopes of patenting a personal idea, rather than going directly to a reputable patent attorney. I ended up spending too much money, and nothing came of it.
You can do this without their “help.”
6. Collaboration. This is needed whether you are working in a company or alone. More than likely, you will need help getting the product or service to market, whether from fabricators to make a prototype, drafting professionals who provide drawings for the patent applications, or labs that test the product in real-life conditions. Before doing this, make sure you have the above protections in place. This applies to designers, suppliers, makers of prototypes, machinery and even market research firms.
7. Brainstorming. This is a good technique to continue refining the product or service if you hit a roadblock. Keep re-imagining how your invention will be used in the real world. Think of additional features that will enhance your original idea.
8. Toolset. Having the right tools, equipment or software to bring the product to life is important. If you don’t, you may need to find a company that can build it or develop it for you. But remember those protections before sharing information! Better to be safe than sorry!
9. Willingness to get dirty. From building the product and testing it out, the process of test marketing takes a lot of time and effort. You will need to roll up your sleeves to prove it out before you can be confident it works. Testing and validating your assumptions are key to ensuring success.
Make sure you are in the field with potential users/buyers to receive feedback. Don’t be afraid to make adjustments in design. You don’t want to try to make adjustments after the product has been launched. A tested and proven product will be much easier to sell. And you don’t want to patent something that can be easily improved upon after the product has been launched. However, you also don’t need it to be perfect to launch. There’s nothing wrong with making improvements over time. You don’t want to allow perfection to be your enemy. However, make sure the product is safe.
The type and duration of field testing depends on the product. If it’s a single part, you may not need to field test. Or, if the product has more moving parts, it could take hundreds of tests over a few years.
There are some analytical tools that can help assess whether the product will work. One is called finite element analysis. It takes a computer-aided drawing of the product, finds stress areas and will analyze such things as whether it can handle real-life use, or withstand impact over a certain time period or number of repetitions.
Labs can conduct accelerated environmental testing, where real-world conditions are simulated and accelerated. For instance, the product may receive a stress hundreds of times a day to simulate what it would withstand over years.
In the automotive industry, where I come from, they also use Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, or FMEA. In this process, various experts look at all the ways it can fail and devise ways to avoid such problems.
10. Prepare for the fork in the road. At some point, you will have to decide the best way for you to bring your product to market. Choosing the right method is critical. Getting your idea to market by selling the rights, licensing or producing is the last mile of the journey. Choosing which way to go can be exciting, but financial intelligence is important.
Multiple additional factors come into play so there is no formula to decide. Lifestyle, competencies, financial backing, competitive environment, economy all play factors in making the right decision. Once the idea, product or service has been proven out, the final phase is critical in getting the product to market and sold.