Presenting Your Prototype: What You Can Learn about Giving Amazing Presentations from Steve Jobs, Y Combinator, and TED

Getting to the point where you have a working prototype can be a long but fulfilling road. By now, you’re so familiar with your own product that it’s probably hard to imagine what it looks like to an objective observer. You know everything about how it functions, what it’s designed for, and what you want people to notice when they first interact with it.

But if you’re going to present your product to potential investors or a manufacturer – in short, if you want to take it to market at all – you’ll have to be able to step back and observe your product as if you’re encountering it for the first time. It’s the only way to ensure that you craft a presentation that offers your audience the information they’ll need and want to know – not just what you want to tell them.

So how do you create an effective prototype presentation? In a sense, you do it the same way that you create any great presentation.

Set the scene, but be concise.

When you present your prototype, you probably won’t have tons of time – maybe 10 to 20 minutes. When you’re presenting to potential investors, it’s best to get to the point as quickly as you can without seeming inelegant. As Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator, says, “Say what you’re doing as quickly as possible, preferably in the first sentence.”

The reason for this is that you don’t want people wondering why they’re listening to you for any longer than necessary. If you start off with a rambling story or details that don’t illustrate your point, you risk your audience getting bored, getting frustrated, or both.

When you’re presenting a prototype, start off strong by saying what you’ve created and why you created it. This should allow your listeners to mentally put your product in context and get ready for what you’re going to say next.

One important note: If you’re an excellent public speaker, you can probably get away with breaking some rules, including this one. If you know you’re great at crafting well-framed, funny, engaging presentations, just do what works for you – while ensuring that you cover all your product’s necessary details.

Refine your slides, then refine them some more.

Slides can work wonders for a presentation, emphasizing and driving home your most important points. Plus, they give the audience somewhere to look besides just at you – which can make everyone in the room a little more comfortable.

However, as Carmine Gallo writes in his Forbes article “11 Presentation Tips You Can Still Learn from Steve Jobs,” most people use way too much text on their slides. “The average PowerPoint slide has forty words. In the first three minutes of Steve Jobs’ iPhone presentation, he uses a grand total of nineteen words (twenty-one if you include dates). Those words are also distributed across about twelve slides,” he says.

When you’re creating your slides, go heavy on the visuals and edit your text down to the most important, effective words you can use. Then go back and cut half of those out.

Decide on your delivery.

Anyone who took a Speech class in high school knows just how important delivery is. There are essentially two ways to deliver your presentation: you can memorize it word-for-word, or you can use notecards.

Either method can be successful, but if you have the time and the presentation is important enough – if it’s for a meeting with investors who are already highly interested, for example – you should try to memorize.

If you do decide to memorize, however, make sure that you know your lines backward and forward. Otherwise, you can end up in what Chris Anderson of TED calls “the valley of awkwardness”: “Their words will sound recited, or there will be painful moments where they stare into the middle distance, or cast their eyes upward, as they struggle to remember their lines. This creates distance between the speaker and the audience.”

If you don’t think you can get through this valley, Anderson advises, just stick to notecards and practice until you can get through them smoothly, with minimal referencing.

Giving a great prototype presentation can help propel your product toward a successful entrance into the market. Want to learn more about taking your new product to market? Read our blog post “A Brief Guide to Taking Your Product to Market: What Comes After Perfecting Your Product?“ If you’re still working on developing your prototype, read our e-book “Product Prototyping: Getting it Right the First Time.”

5 Things You Should Do Before Pitching Your Product to Investors

So you’ve got your idea, you’ve got a working prototype, and you want to break into the market. Now all you need is: money.

No matter how amazing or useful your new product may be, it’s pretty unlikely that investors will be knocking on your door begging to be allowed to invest in what you’ve created. And that means that, if your funding plan includes investors, you’re going to have to approach a few on your own.

So how do you do that in the most effective manner? Here are 5 tips for how to pitch to investors.

1. From the start, realize that most investors don’t want to invest in your product – they want to invest in your business. This is a critical distinction, as it will help you cultivate the right mindset when formulating your pitch.

You can spend all the time in the world talking about your product, but if you’re not able to show them how you’re going to build a successful company around it, you’ll most likely be out of luck.

2. Create a profile on AngelList, Gust, or another investor-startup social media site. These websites connect startups with angel investors. The way they work is you create your profile and include as much detailed information as you can about yourself, your product, your company, and your team members, if you have any.

Investors, who also use the site, can then find you easily by following the field you’re working in, or you specifically. Some entrepreneurs choose to send a personal (emphasis on personal – no copy and pasting a mass email!) note to investors that follow them or their field. Just use your best judgment when it comes to reaching out.

You can also share your profile with friends and acquaintances to widen your reach.

3. Carefully craft your business plan. Since you’ve recognized that what investors want to hear about most is your business, you’ll be well-prepared to put the time and effort into creating a solid business plan.

For some detail on what to put in your business plan, you can read our post “How to Start a Company to Create Your Own Product.” As for other pointers, one of the most important things you can do to increase your chances of success is to know your numbers.

You should be able to rattle off any important numbers in your business plan from memory, and you’ve got to be able to explain them, too. You don’t want to have to go flipping through your own presentation to find answers when a potential investor asks you a perfectly normal question like “How fast can you scale this business?”

4. Make sure your finances are in excellent order. Depending on your situation, you may already have some revenue and expenses related to your business, or you may be starting from zero. Either way, investors want to make sure that they’ll get a return on their investment – and if you don’t have any financial history for your business, then they’ll want to get that assurance from your personal financial history.

That means that if you have delinquent debts, overused credit cards, or other poor marks in your credit history, you may want to spend some time cleaning up your credit before you start asking people to invest in you. Unless you’ve got some truly extreme extenuating circumstances, a shoddy credit history will get you a “no” pretty quickly.

5. Do your homework. Angel investors are generally busy people, and you don’t want to waste their time – especially when you’re asking them to give you a sizeable amount of money. So before you approach anyone, you need to make sure that they’re actually interested in investing in a business like yours.

That can get a lot more complicated than you may think.

For example, maybe you’ve found an investor whose interests include new medical products, which is what you’re producing. But what kind of exit strategy timeline are they expecting? If you project an exit strategy in 10 years but the investor you’re pitching is looking for a 5-year exit, then that’s indicative of a mismatch. You want to pay attention to these bits of information, because often investors will offer up very detailed plans of what kind of investment opportunities they’re seeking.

Now, not everyone will, of course. And investors do change their minds, like anyone – an investor who wouldn’t have been interested in your product a year ago might have shifted her focus in the past few months. All the same, you simply can’t afford to pitch anyone without knowing as much as you can about their interests and desires first.

Building a company can be an arduous task, which is why Pivot offers Business Development services in addition to our Product Design services, Manufacturing services, Regulatory services, and other offerings. To find out more about how Pivot can help you build a company around your product, read our e-book “Turn A Great Idea into a Thriving Company.”

5 Bizarre Inventions That Have Made Millions of Dollars

It’s the goose that laid the golden egg, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: we’re talking about the invention idea that seems crazy, but turns out to be wildly, insanely successful.

History, both distant and recent, is full of these unlikely top inventions of the product development world – although it’s certainly fair to say that the rise of consumer culture and increase in expendable income throughout the 20th century has had a lot to do with it. It’s hard to imagine that a pioneer family would spend their hard-earned few dollars on a Magic Eight ball.

So without further ado, here are 5 bizarre inventions that made millions.

1. The Pet Rock. The inventor of The Pet Rock, Gary Dahl, came up with his utterly ridiculous creation in 1975. He was a millionaire by the time the Pet Rock was discontinued, just one year later. Was he a genius or a con artist? There’s no telling, but probably a little bit of both.

One thing we do know is that he had a strong sense of the absurd. As Dahl said in a 1975 interview with People magazine, “People are so damn bored, tired of all their problems. This takes them on a fantasy trip – you might say we’ve packaged a sense of humor."

And that Pet Rock wasn’t just being sold in Five and Dimes or Woolworth’s. That same interview quotes a gift buyer at Bloomingdale’s in New York, Dennis Hamel, saying “It’s unbelievable. We’re selling 400 a day.”

2. Big Mouth Billy Bass. You remember the commercials: a seemingly real mounted bass suddenly comes to life and sings covers of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River” and “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

That’s Big Mouth Billy Bass, the gag gift that made novelty company Gemmy Industries and its VP of product development, Joe Pellettieri, overnight successes. According to theNew York Times, Queen Elizabeth had one at Balmoral Castle; and according to the Orlando Sentinel, Bill Clinton gave a Big Mouth Billy Bass to Al Gore. The singing fish made Gemmy millions.

3. The Snuggie. Who knew a fleece blanket with sleeves would appeal to our collective sense of humor so successfully? The viral sensation has brought in more than $500 million for its creator, Josh Boilen, and the company that created it, Allstar Products.

A lot of its success had to do with the marketing – the commercials made the most of the item’s ridiculousness, featuring families wearing the voluminous sleeved blankets together and watching TV or roasting marshmallows. And the Snuggie shows no sign of fading away, either – in honor of the Snuggie’s 5th birthday, the company just released new designs, including a bikini, a tuxedo, and an evening gown.

4. The Slinky. This incredibly simple toy came out in 1945 and so far has earned $250 million. The creator, Richard T. James, was a naval engineer who invented the Slinky after dropping a tension spring on the floor and watching it move around.

James ended up creating his own company, the James Spring and Wire Co., to produce the Slinky, and he debuted it in a demonstration at Gimbels Department Store in Philadelphia. According to legend, the entire inventory – 400 units – sold out within 90 minutes. In the 1970s, James left everything behind to join the Wycliffe Bible Translators in Bolivia, and his wife took over the company.

5. The Magic 8 Ball. While the Magic 8 Ball won’t actually tell your fortune, the mechanism that turns to give you your answer after was actually inspired by a clairvoyant. The inventor of that mechanism, Albert C. Carter, created it after studying a “spirit writing” device that his psychic mother, Claire, developed in Cincinnati.

Before it assumed its well-known black-and-white form in the 1950s, the toy had a brief life as a crystal ball. While it wasn’t very popular, it did catch the eye of Brunswick Billiards, a Chicago billiards company – it was they who commissioned the original Magic 8 Ball. The rest is history.

While we can’t guarantee your idea will make you a million dollars, no matter how weird it is, we can help you bring that idea to life. Whether you need product design, prototyping services, manufacturing services, or supply chain management services, Pivot’s team is ready to help you. Interested in a free consultation? Contact us!

Top 10 Books to Boost Your Creativity and Productivity

What was the last book you read? A thriller you picked up in an airport bookstore? A highly acclaimed work of literary fiction? A book of business advice by a famous CEO?

Great choices, all of those – but when’s the last time you read a book that gives you solid advice on building up your creativity?

That’s what these books will do. So the next time you find yourself stuck on a product idea, struggling on your product’s marketing campaign, or just generally creatively stifled, pick one up and let the creative juices start flowing.

1. Creative Confidence offers creative thinking exercises and tactics that will help you put your most creative foot forward.”, by Tom Kelley and David Kelley.

The Kelley brothers are the duo behind IDEO, an international design and consulting firm headquartered in Silicon Valley. Arguing that every one of us is creative – not just those in the “creative” professions – Creative Confidence offers tactics and ways of thinking that will help you put your most creative foot forward.

2. Contagious: Why Things Catch On, by Jonah Berger.

Technically, this is a marketing book – but it’ll give you excellent food for thought as you’re working on your next big product idea. Berger is a Wharton School of Business marketing professor, and he’s studied what makes things popular – including what makes products get word-of-mouth advertising.

3. Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind, by Jocelyn K. Glei.

Who among us doesn’t struggle with daily distractions? Glei’s book offers practical advice for building a productive, solid routine that will give you the freedom to invest in your creative work, while still managing the rest of your daily priorities.

4. Imagine: How Creativity Works, by Jonah Lehrer.

Lehrer, like the Kelley brothers, believes fervently that creativity is something every one of us can cultivate, and this book shows you how. Using engaging storytelling and concise, useful tips, Lehrer’s book will help you understand how to cultivate your own creative mind.

5. The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald A. Norman.

A classic must-read for anyone who designs – well, anything – this book goes into the why’s and how’s of great design, showing just how important it is to the human experience.

6. Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step-by-Step, by Edward de Bono.

Written in 1970, this is a classic book on the alternative to “vertical thinking,” or the traditional way we’re taught to approach problems: head-on, sequentially. As de Bono says, the approach works fine for simple situations, but complex issues require something different. With lateral, or creative thinking, you’re encouraged to free up your imagination and look at things from a variety of angles.

7. Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

You know how runners talk about a “runner’s high”? In a sense, that’s what Csikszentmihalyi means by “flow”: the state of being highly aware, highly focused, and completely involved in what you are doing. It’s not something many of us experience often, but Csikszentmihalyi’s book shows you how you can achieve this state on demand.

8. The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life, by John Maeda.

In this short, 100-page book, graphic designer and MIT professor Maeda sets forth 10 principles of simplicity that will help you identify the extraneous in your own designs – as well as various other aspects of your life and work. It’s a quick, satisfying read.

9. The Creative Priority: Putting Innovation to Work at Your Business, by Jerry Hirshberg

Written by the founder and president of Nissan Design International, The Creative Priority tells the engaging story of one of the most innovative automotive companies in the world. At the same time, Hirshberg offers principles and strategies for making creativity a priority in your own team, department, or company.

10. Process: 50 Product Designs from Concept to Manufacture, by Jennifer Hudson.

A fascinating read for anyone interested in product design, Hudson’s book selects 50 items from around the world and takes you through every step of their design and production process. You’ll see unique materials used in unorthodox ways, new technology at work, and complex manufacturing processes explained.

Want to read more about how to improve creativity? Read our blog posts 6 TED Talks to Inspire Inventors and Product Designers, What’s the Advice from 6 Creative Geniuses?, and 5 Enjoyable Ways to Increase Your Creative Thinking.

3 Tips for Marketing Your New Product on a Tight Budget

Once you’ve spent days, weeks, or months perfecting your new product, the hard work is over, right? Well – not exactly.

Assuming you want to do more with your product than just stare at it while it sits on a shelf in your garage, you’ve got to start putting together a marketing plan. This may sound daunting, not to mention expensive – but thanks to the internet, there are lots of product marketing tips you can take advantage of, to effectively spread the word about your product.

Reach out to reporters and journalists.

Getting media coverage is an excellent way to give your product a boost in the public eye – and all it costs you is your time.

To get started, brainstorm some publications that you think might be interested in what you’ve created. If you’ve got an outdoorsy product, like our solar camping battery, you’d want to go after Outside magazine or National Geographic Adventure. If your product is specific to one field, like medicine, you’d want to reach out to journals and industry publications.

The goal at this point is not to earn a cover story, but to make these journalists aware of you and your company or product so you can start building a relationship with them.

To do this, you’ve got to get personal: Find the specific journalists who cover the kind of topics your product fits into and do your very best to contact them personally. Nothing will get you thrown on the slush pile quicker than a hastily written mass email.

After you’ve come up with a few reporters and outlets on your own, try using some online tools like BuzzSumo or Klout to find top bloggers and influencers to reach out to. Again, you’ve got to put time and effort into crafting a well-written, personal email that will help you start building that relationship.

Make sure to gather a healthy mix of large and small publications, as well as print and online outlets. And remember that when it comes to writers, they’re a whole lot more interested in your product’s story than a list of its specs and features.

Go after inbound marketing leads.

Inbound marketing means, in essence, that people come to you instead of you going to them. A Facebook or Google ad, for example, is outbound marketing. A whitepaper or blog post, on the other hand, is inbound marketing.

The great thing about inbound marketing is that, like contacting journalists, it doesn’t have to cost you anything.

You certainly can hire a writer, content strategist, or marketing firm to help you – and if you have the funds available, doing so can be a highly worthwhile investment. But if you’re looking to cut costs, you can also find plenty of free resources on the web to help you put together valuable content that will start bringing customers to you.

Some ideas to start with are whitepapers, blog posts, Vines (short 6-second videos), or infographics.

Get social, with a strategy.

You’ve probably already got a social media account set up across several platforms, but have you thought about a social strategy?

Posting frequently to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. is a good place to start. But to make your social media presence truly effective, you need some sort of goal to work toward. Are you trying to get noticed by influencers? Grow your email list? Establish a community of fans?

Whatever it may be, write your goal down and then work on using your social media presence to move you toward that goal. If you’re wanting to establish a community of fans, maybe you want to start giving sneak peeks of your product before it launches. You could focus on very image- and video -heavy posts or announce a contest where the winner wins your product.

There are all kinds of ways you can leverage social media to grow your audience, and hopefully turn that audience into satisfied product purchasers.

Are you working on developing small business marketing ideas? For more help, read our e-book From Concept to Product Launch: A Guide to Product Development.

7 of Our Favorite Chindogu Inventions: The Japanese Art of the Unuseless

The Japanese are some of the best in the world when it comes to high-tech innovation. Cars, technology – they’ve got it down.

However, the land of the rising sun is also home to the concept of Chindogu, the art of inventing “unuseless” creations. Butter in a gluestick container, a tie that’s actually an umbrella, shoes equipped with a tiny broom and dustpan … these are all Chindogu.

To you and me, these Japanese inventions look absurd. But to Kenji Kawakami, an inventor and the progenitor of Chindogu, they’re an embodiment of a whole philosophy – with the added benefit of giving the world a few laughs.

The 10 Tenets of Chindogu

While these creations may appear to be a random assortment of strange and funny ideas, in order to actually be worthy of the name Chindogu, they must adhere to Kawakami’s 10 tenets (taken from Chindogu.com, shortened and paraphrased in places):

1. A Chindogu must be (almost) completely useless.
2. A Chindogu must exist in the real world. You must be able to hold it in your hand.
3. Every Chindogu object is something that has broken free from the chain of usefulness. They represent freedom of thought and action.
4. Chindogu must be tools for everyday life that everyone can understand and appreciate.
5. Chindogu are not for sale.
6. The creation of Chindogu is primarily a problem-solving activity – humor is just a by-product.
7. Chindogu are innocent. They should be made with the best intentions.
8. Chindogu must adhere to certain standards of social decency, agreed upon by the International Chindogu Society. No cheap, base, or cruel humor is allowed.
9. Chindogu are offerings to the world, not to be copyrighted or patented.
10. Chindogu must never favor one group, race, religion, gender, etc. over another. They are without prejudice.

Now, without further ado, our list of the 7 most ridiculous Chindogu inventions we’ve seen:

1. The butter stick. It’s basically butter in a gluestick – which, when you think about it, could almost be useful. This is a prime example of how Chindogu inventions walk that extremely thin line between “What a crazy idea” and “That might actually work.”
2. Duster slippers for cats. Cats spend enough time walking around on bookshelves, tables, counters, and on top of TVs that they could stand to be put to work. Throw on a pair of these kitty dusting slippers and make them earn their keep. Plus, we all know how much cats love wearing things on their paws.
3. The chopstick fan. For the impatient eater. This handy fan attached to your chopsticks cools your food while it’s on the way to your mouth. How’s that for a time saver?
4. The rain-proof umbrella. If you really don’t want to get wet, this umbrella is for you. With fold-down plastic sides, it covers your entire body.
5. Baby onesie mop. Just like cats, babies don’t do much to help with the cleaning either. Let them mop the floor while they learn to crawl!
6. Extendable arm for selfies. Oh, hang on – this one made it out of the Chindogu world and into real life. Whether or not it’s still actually unuseless is up to you.
7. The book-shaped pillow. College students who’ve fallen asleep while studying, only to wake up in a drool puddle with a neckache, will appreciate this one. Shaped just like an open book, the “pages” are a soft pillow. It’ll take you back to your student days in a heartbeat.

At Pivot, we generally find ourselves creating products that do have a use in the real world, but you never know – maybe we’ll end up with a Chindogu creation at some point. In the meantime, if you’d like to find out more about developing a product that you do want to take to market, check out our e-book library.

8 of the Strangest Historical Inventions

Times change, but people – not so much. While our technology has come a long, long way from, say, 200 years ago, our individual love of invention hasn’t changed a bit. There have always been people who push the limits of what’s possible. Sometimes you get an invention that changes history, like the telephone; sometimes, you get a bizarre footnote, like a car with a shovel on the front to catch pedestrians.

History is full of weird, interesting inventions, but here’s our pick for 10 of the strangest.

1. Amphibious bicycle. One of the earliest photographs you can find of an amphibious bicycle is from 1932 in Paris, when an inventor created a bicycle with large hollow floats for wheels.

Although for decades, the allure of an amphibious bicycle has been more for the novelty of it than anything else, there’s one design available in India that has the potential to save lives. Invented by a man from the Indian state of Bihar, Mohammed Saidullah, this bike is designed to keep people safe during the devastating floods that region gets all too often.

2. Nikola Tesla’s oscillator, or “earthquake machine.” Tesla was a genius and a futurist who contributed hugely to modern science. He also created some very strange machines, the effects of which are not all definitively documented. One of those was an oscillator, a reciprocating electricity generator that Tesla claimed caused vibrations so strong that it shook the New York City building that housed his office and several building around it.
3. A boat with boots. Although no one seems to have found an actual prototype of one of these booted boats, there is a 1915 drawing depicting a one-person rubber boat with long rubber boots attached to the front. Perhaps when your arms get tired from rowing, you can just switch to walking?
4. A shovel to catch pedestrians that you hit with your car. Basically a cow-catcher for people, this invention was designed to decrease the number of pedestrian fatalities in cities. A photo of the creation was taken in 1924 in Paris. Pedestrian fatalities were a major problem in the early years of the automobile, but it seems this people-catcher didn’t do too much to help. Otherwise, surely it would have been adopted more widely.
5. The one-wheeled motorcycle. Invented by an Italian inventor named M. Goventosa in 1931, this one-wheeled, motor-powered vehicle featured a single large, open wheel with an internal combustion engine that sat inside it. The driver sat astride the engine. Supposedly, this machine was able to reach speeds of up to 93 miles per hour.
6. Cone-shaped snowstorm face protector. While being blasted in the face by snow is hardly comfortable, it’s hard to believe that these plastic snowstorm face protectors are much of a step up. Visibility must have suffered pretty greatly, too.
7. Wooden bathing suit. These spruce wood women’s bathing suits were designed to make swimming easier for timid bathers – and also, it seems, to promote the Gray Harbor lumber industry during “Wood Week” in 1929. According to a Popular Science article from 1930, the bathing suits were “the latest novelty for use on the bathing beaches,” and despite what you’d expect, “so far, none of them has warped or cracked.”
8. The Iter Avto built-in map system for motorists. This invention was truly ingenious. It seems that today’s drivers aren’t the only ones who don’t want to have to stop and actually read a map in order to get where they intend to go. The Iter Avto was basically an early GPS system for your vehicle. Released in 1930, this onboard navigation system was mounted on the dashboard and used scrolling paper maps to show the driver where he or she was headed. The scroll’s pace would be determined by the speed of the car, as the device was connected by cable to the car’s speedometer.

What’s your crazy – or not so crazy – invention idea? We’d love to help you get it off the ground. Check out our Resources section, which is filled with e-books, FAQs, newsletters, and other helpful information about product design, prototyping, and more.

4 Ways to Encourage Innovation in the Workplace

While innovation is now considered an important part of a successful workplace in all kinds of industries, it wasn’t too long ago that the opposite was the case.

Instead of embracing innovative, out-of-the-box thinking, workplace culture generally tended to corral creativity into a few “creative” departments: marketing, graphic design, product design, etc.

Thankfully, most of us working today benefit from a widespread culture that sees the value of innovation across the board. However, “seeing the value” isn’t the same thing as “actively encouraging.”

Even at so-called creative companies, like those that develop, design, or market new products, employees don’t always feel comfortable sharing their new or risky ideas. And that can have a very real negative impact on your company’s ability to compete in a marketplace that not just rewards, but demands innovative ideas.

So what ca you do to encourage workplace innovation among your employees? Here are a few tips.

Send a clear message that feedback, new ideas, and creative thinking are welcome.

It’s easy to assume that your employees know you welcome their ideas and feedback, but are you truly sending that message? Do you actively encourage brainstorming at meetings? Do you make yourself available to employees, or do you spend most of your day behind a closed office door?

Take the time to reevaluate the message you’re sending your employees with your day-to-day behavior. If you realize that you’re not actually as available to them as you think you are, it’s time to make some changes.

Allocate time for brainstorming and problem-solving.

One of the biggest ways you can let your employees know that you value creativity in the workplace is to explicitly devote some time to it.

This can be done in a number of ways. Maybe it’s saving 15 minutes for small-group brainstorming at your next product meeting. Maybe it’s creating a monthly brainstorming session for each department.

Whatever method you choose, make sure there’s some sort of structure or specific problem that your employees are tackling. Contrary to what one might assume, structure and creativity do go hand-in-hand. If you want effective innovation to happen, it has to be guided – loosely guided, perhaps, but guided just the same.

Reevaluate your business processes – are they stifling creativity?

Even if you yourself are available to your employees, it may be that the processes employees have to go through to turn their innovative deas into reality are discouraging them from trying.

Let’s say an employee has an idea for a variation on one of your existing products that they want to explore. What do they have to do in order to get some time to experiment with the idea? Do they have to get approval from a supervisor? Does that supervisor have to get approval from other departments? Would the employee be able to do that experimentation during their normal workday, or would they have to fit it in on their lunch breaks, or after-hours?

There will always be certain processes that have to stay in place to preserve order, even if they do make it a bit harder to employees to innovate. However, it’s a near-certainty that you’ll find other barriers to innovation that can be easily removed or changed, and that’s where you want to put your focus.

Emulate start-ups and tech companies by giving employees a set amount of time to work on personal or pet projects.

There’s no question that start-ups and tech companies are some of the most innovation-friendly companies around. They have to be – that’s what they’re in the business of.

It doesn’t mean you have to go buy a ping-pong table or start hosting indie film nights, but you should give some consideration to the idea of “20 percent time,” which was originally made famous by Google. The idea is that employees can take 20 percent of their time to work on projects that would benefit the company.

While the actual existence of 20 percent time at Google has been questioned, the idea is a powerful one. If your employees know that they can spend a certain amount of time exploring new ideas on their own, many of them will – and you never know what great products might come out of it.

If Pivot can help you get one of your great, new products off the ground, contact us! It doesn’t matter what stage your product is in – from concept and design to manufacturing, we handle it all.

How to Come Up With 5 New Product Ideas Today

If you’re a product designer or developer, coming up with new ideas isn’t just a fun pastime. It’s how you make your living.

But just like everyone else, those of us working in the inventing world get stuck in creative ruts now and then. And when the pressure to create is on, it can be even harder to get out of them.

To help you pull yourself out of those inevitable low places, we’ve put together this list of ways you can come up with 5 new products ideas right now, today.

Get specific.

One effective way to start coming up with new ideas again is to give yourself a specific problem to solve. It can be anything at all: What would make cleaning a bathtub easier? How could I improve upon the standard briefcase? You get the idea.

Once you’ve given yourself that structure, you may be surprised how quickly the ideas start coming in. You’re not looking for finished, marketable ideas yet – you just want a solid outline that you can either use to generate additional ideas later on, or that you can explore developing when you’re ready.

Try mind mapping.

It’s not as New Age as it sounds. Mind mapping is a simple process for visualizing information developed by a British pop psychologist back in the 1970s. The structure will probably be familiar to you – a mind map consists of a tree-like or nodal diagram that places a big or central idea in the center of a page, with related ideas coming off of that central idea like branches.

In surveys of business people who use mind mapping, the process has been shown to increase productivity, improve collaboration, enhance communication, and improve critical thinking and decision making skills, among other things.

Mind mapping can also be very useful for people who don’t think in a linear fashion – like, incidentally, many right-brained or creative people.

Chat with a friend or colleague you admire.

It’s no secret that surrounding yourself with people who inspire you is a great way to push yourself to achieve. To help get some ideas flowing, call up – or better yet, go for coffee with – a friend or colleague who makes you think or challenges you.

You don’t have to have a specific topic in mind when you talk. Just see where your conversation takes you, and bring along a notebook to jot down any brilliant ideas that arise.

Take the pressure off.

People get great ideas doing all kinds of things, from washing the dishes to taking a shower to walking the dog. Sometimes all it takes is removing that pressure to create to start your juices flowing again.

Get your mind off the situation at hand by doing something else – it could be something mindless and mundane, like chores around the house, something physical, like yoga or cycling, or a leisure activity you really enjoy, like heading out into nature for a bit.

The important thing is to relax your brain and let your problem go for a bit. It’s just like when you used to study for exams in college – after a certain point, all you can do is take a break and let everything sink in.

Use one of your existing products as a starting point.

Products you’ve already created can be solid sources of new ideas, too.

Maybe there’s an extension or variation of that product that would improve its function. Maybe there’s a companion product you can come up with that would complement your existing product. Or maybe there’s a feature that you’d wanted to include on that original product that just didn’t fit. You could use create a new product around that particular feature.

If you’re stuck on the concept phase – or any other phase of your product development and manufacturing – you can always contact us at Pivot. Schedule a free consultation today!

Why You Should Consider Working with Experts When It Comes to Compliance

For companies and inventors working on products that are highly regulated – electronic products, for example, or industrial products – ensuring that those products meet all the regulatory compliance standards can be a challenge.

When you’re getting your product components from facilities located across the globe, or selling the product in different countries, wading through the red tape and various compliance requirements gets complicated – quickly.

Even if your product is being designed, manufactured, and distributed exclusively in the U.S., and has relatively few regulatory requirements, it can help to have the assistance of an expert. Here are a few of the reasons why.

Product Compliance Requirements Vary.

While every product, more or less, is subject to compliance regulation, the requirements can vary greatly from product to product.

General consumer products have certain requirements, while children’s products are subject to much more stringent regulation. When it comes to industrial products, each industry has its own specific compliance regulations. (What nearly every product does have in common, however, is that it must pass a testing program before it can receive its certificate of compliance.)

Navigating these complex regulations, and figuring out which requirements your product must fulfill, can be a headache and require a huge investment of time. Enlisting the help of an expert can help you greatly reduce the time you spend on compliance and get your product to market faster.

Regulations change

In certain industries, like computer science and technology especially, regulations change and evolve on a regular basis. As you can imagine, this can be hard to keep track of – and the last thing you want is to be slapped with a fine or penalty for non-compliance with a certain regulation you didn’t know existed. At the worst, this can even lead to product recalls or lawsuits.

The best safeguard against this is to work with a professional – someone who’s been through the regulatory process before and stays up to date on the regulations for the industry or products you’re working with.

The most successful products go beyond just compliance, pushing themselves to surpass basic safety and industry regulations.

There’s a lot to be said for doing more than just meeting baseline industry regulations. In some cases, that can mean the difference between your product and a competitor’s.

After all, every product must comply with regulations if it’s going to be sold. Depending on what your product is – for example, if it’s a medical device, a children’s toy, or an industrial product – going beyond basic compliance can provide a real competitive advantage when it comes to getting your item into the hands of users.

Compliance provides an opportunity to strengthen your business.

On that same note, if you or your company is planning on putting out multiple products, or multiple lines of products, building a reputation for going above and beyond the basic compliance regulations can elevate your business to a higher level.

Not only can doing so help you earn the loyalty of your customers, but it can challenge you and your team to continue to improve the safety and functioning of the products you create. And if you’re working with a trusted compliance partner, rather than trying to handle it all yourself, you’ll have more time to spend on developing those products.

When we at Pivot assist with regulatory compliance, for example, we’re able to work directly with the lab certifying the product. We provide them with all the data they need in order to do their testing, cutting down on both compliance costs and the time it takes to get your product certified.

We can do this for existing products, too. Suppose you have a product that is no longer compliant, due to a change in regulations. Pivot can work with you to bring that product back into compliance. And it goes without saying that any product that we develop will pass certification.

Are you ready to enlist some help in getting your product to compliance standards? Contact Pivot today!