Of course, invention isn’t just about bolt-from-the blue ideas and Eureka moments. There are many things that designers, business, lone inventors, universities and public sector agencies could do to encourage invention and the development of innovative ideas into commercial reality
Companies could consider investing in more early-stage inventions and actively inviting proposals from inventors - including their own employees.
- More companies could set up simple systems to evaluate ideas quickly and impartially.
- Even an invention outside a company's product range may offer a valuable opportunity, as the real prize may be the licensing potential of the IP rather than the product itself.
Universities should also heed this advice, and remember that their invention talent bank includes not just academic staff but also undergraduates and technicians.
Inventors can help themselves by thinking 'business opportunity' rather than 'brilliant invention' and equipping themselves accordingly. That includes:
- commercially realistic plans and expectations
- and a project team to provide strength in all aspects of development and exploitation.
Public sector agencies and government should consider new ways to help inventors and inventive small companies. The pay-off would be innovation, more enterprise, more jobs, more wealth - and more tax revenues.
- They must recognise that while invention is high risk and rarely delivers short-term returns, many ideas need very little spending on them to prove (or disprove) their potential.
- A relatively small amount of first-stage public sector support can make it much easier to secure more substantial second-stage investment from the private sector.
The education sector could consider doing more to teach skills essential to the development of inventions. These could include:
- basic knowledge about IPR and prior art searching
- more information on using market research
- introductions to the two main exploitation options: licensing and business start-up.