The 7 Most Popular Tech Projects on Kickstarter Right Now

Kickstarter, the online crowdfunding site that’s helped launch wildly popular products like the Coolest Cooler and Solar Roadways, is a massive repository of new, innovative – and some not so innovative – products in development.

There’s nothing like a quick browse through the site to kick-start your own creativity. It’s inspiring to see some of the amazing ideas that product designers, inventors, and regular people who’ve never designed a product before, are coming up with.

If you’re feeling creatively stunted, here are 10 of the most popular tech products on Kickstarter right now.

The Sento Towel

You wouldn’t normally think of a towel as a piece of technology, but the Sento towel is changing that.

It’s a larger-than-typical Japanese-style bath towel that dries 3 times more quickly than your average towel, while also able to absorb 3 times its weight in water. Add in its anti-bacterial qualities that eliminate odors, and it’s easy to see why the Sento towel has shot to the top of Kickstarter’s “funded” list.

Line-us: the Little Robot Drawing Arm

Line-us is a tiny robotic arm that mimics your movement as you draw with a stylus or your finger on a screen. Equipped with a pen, the robot draws on paper whatever you draw on your tablet.

Line-us is cute and a little bit silly – while it doesn’t score high in the practicality scale, it definitely brings it home in terms of fun.

SELFLY Camera: the Smart, Flying, Phone Case Camera

Did you ever think you’d see a flying, autonomous phone case, let alone one that can take pictures?

That’s what SELFLY is: a little drone that can be unleashed to take photos from all angles and all positions. Perhaps one reason it’s so popular (it’s received almost double its original funding goal) is that it combines three iconic things from this particular cultural moment: smartphones, drones, and selfies.

NOLO VR

The highly affordable NOLO virtual reality system allows users to do more in their VR games than simply look around passively. The NOLO features two hand-held motion trackers, allowing you to do everything from play golf, to draw, to cast spells and throw baseballs – anything you can do in a VR game.

The NOLO is compatible with mobile and Steam VR games.

Intelligent Security Camera Cover

The Intelligent Security webcam privacy cover is for those of us who cover our webcams with tape or a post-it – you know, whatever we may use to ensure that hackers don’t start broadcasting us to the world without our knowledge.

This cover is leagues above those makeshift fixes. It’s thinner than a credit card, incredibly easy to install and use, and can reveal or hide your camera lens in an instant.

Scollar Smart Collar

With all the fitness and health trackers that humans have these days, it stands to reason that our pets should have a tracker, too.

That’s what the Scollar is: a smart collar equipped with GPS tracking, training and feeding functionalities, night visibility, and medication reminders. You can even expand the Scollar’s functionality to communicate with pet doors and electric fences, to help with bark training, and to monitor your pet’s health.

EXYRA Eyewear for Digital Eyestrain

Computer glasses maybe be a bit helpful when it comes to reducing the eyestrain that comes from staring at a screen for hours each day, but they’re anything but stylish.

That’s why EXYRA created the EXYRA lens, a lens that offers anti-glare, anti-fatigue, UV protection, and blue light filtering in a single eyewear lens. The company is creating stylish, modern eyeglasses equipped with this lens designed to reduce symptoms of our digital lifestyle including eyestrain, headaches, and blurred vision.

Kickstarter can be a great platform to launch your product, but there are certain guidelines you should follow. To learn more about funding your product idea, read our post “The Pros and Cons of Using Crowdfunding Platforms for Product Funding.”

7 Reasons Why You Should be Using CAD Instead of Manual Drafting

Computer Aided Design, or CAD, is a technology that’s been widely used in the engineering and product design industries for years.

However, as with any technology, there are some people who’ve held out against CAD, preferring the manual drafting process instead. Maybe you’re one of them!

While that may be what works best in certain cases, there are so many advantages to using CAD that it’s worth another look. Here are just a few.

1. CAD can create 3D models.

If you’ve ever tried to create a 3D model manually, you know how difficult and time-consuming a process it is.

A CAD 3D modeling package can take your 2D model and turn it into 3D quickly and easily. And if you’re going to be using 3D printing at any point during the product development process – say, for rapid prototyping – you have to have a CAD 3D model for the printer software to read.

2. CAD is easy to learn and use.

You’d think that a computer program as complex as CAD would be a nightmare to learn, but that’s actually not the case. CAD is fairly easy to learn for engineers and product designers – in other words, for people who are used to thinking spatially and who have a background in design.

One of the best parts of CAD designing is that you have the same simple tools that we all use on our computers every day: cut, paste, copy, and delete. These have virtually no learning curve at all.

3. CAD designs can be replicated almost instantly.

With CAD software, you can create as many copies of a design as you like. This is a huge advantage over manual drafting. If designs need to be shared with multiple departments, for example, or handed over to another product designer, being able to replicate your designs exactly is vitally important.

4. CAD designs can be modified quickly.

Modifying a CAD design for, say, a second generation of a product, can be done quickly and easily. What’s more, all your modifications can be tracked and saved in the file. That means a lower chance of modifications being lost or forgotten.

Lost or unnoticed modifications can create huge costs and time disadvantages for companies, so any method that reduced the chance of this happening is something worth considering.

5. CAD files can be shared worldwide, instantly.

In the global economy, the product development process can be distributed among different companies, some of which may be across the world from each other (unless you use an all-in-one product development partner).

In these situations, it’s a simple necessity that you be able to share your designs and files with your partners in the process.

Manual drawings can be scanned, certainly, but CAD files can be shared, viewed, and modified all within a single program. Scanned versions, on the other hand, may need multiple programs for recipients to be able to open, view, and comment upon them.

6. CAD files integrate seamlessly with Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) and Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) packages.

If you’ll be working with CAM or CAE packages at any point throughout the product development process, you’ll cut way down on time if you use CAD right off the bat.

Manual drawings cannot be used for CAM or CAE packages, so if you end up using these at some point, you’ll have to make CAD files anyway.

7. CAD files are more secure than paper drawings.

CAD programs come with permission controls that can be used to restrict access to just the people who need to see the file.

This is not only helpful for security purposes, but also for preventing unauthorized editing from others who aren’t directly engaged with the project. While security measures can be taken with paper drawings, it’s nearly impossible to keep a paper drawing completely secure.

Computer aided design is an incredibly useful tool for engineers, product designers, and others engaged in the product development process. For more on how technology is affecting product design and development, read our post “6 Manufacturing Trends to Watch for in 2017.”

The Advantages of Biometric Security

Biometrics, or metrics that are related to human physiology, have been used in security measures since the early 1900s (think fingerprinting, which is still used today to identify individuals).

But we’ve come a very long way since then. Things we used to see only in spy movies – retinal scans, voice recognition, palm identification – are all realities now, and have been for some time. We continue to make strides in biometric security as well, because it offers so many advantages over other security measures. See this infographic for more, and read about each of these advantages below.

Biometrics cannot be lost or forgotten, and they’re very unlikely to be stolen.

Anyone can forget a password or code word. But you can’t forget or lose your fingerprints, retinal patterning, or palmprint. For that reason alone, biometrics have an edge over more traditional security measures.

While it’s not impossible for biometric data to be stolen, it’s highly unlikely that any reputable organization would store its data in a way that hackers could access without extreme difficulty. This is not always the case, of course – the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which was the target of a legendary hacking in 2015 that included 5.6 million sets of fingerprints, had been warned of multiple problems with its cybersecurity systems before the hacking occurred.

The bottom line? Unless biometric data is stored sloppily, on unencrypted servers, it is very, very difficult to steal it.

There’s zero chance of two users having the same identification.

Biometric security also means that no two users will have the same ID, which is a huge advantage, especially when it comes to access to top secret and highly sensitive information.

There have been cases of mistaken identity, allowing two people with the same password or name access to classified information, even when one person has a much lower security clearance than the other. This, of course, can lead to major security breaches.

Data is kept highly secure from outside users.

As mentioned earlier, any reputable organization keeps its biometric data highly secure. Breaches do, unfortunately happen – however, the breach of biometric data like fingerprints, retinal scans, etc. is much less frequent than that of things like Social Security numbers.

Biometrics provide unique identification on the individual level.

Since you can accurately identify users with zero doubt, biometric security measures allow you to link a specific user to a particular event or access point – say, a computer login or secure entry.

This means that if a breach does occur, it’s much easier to track who may have committed it, and how they accessed your facility or database.

It’s nearly impossible to duplicate biometrics.

Just as it’s extremely difficult to steal biometric data, it’s also practically impossible to duplicate it. Iris scans, for example, rely on tiny patterns and details in a person’s iris pigmentation that are almost impossible to see with the naked eye.

Iris scanners take an extremely detailed picture of your iris, identifying about 240 unique features. There’s almost no way that a person could duplicate your particular iris scan. The same is true for facial recognition, or vein recognition, which recognizes the pattern of veins in a person’s hand or finger.

Biometrics systems are simple to install and require little funding.

Despite the advanced technology that biometrics systems use, these types of security systems are actually quite simple to install and relatively inexpensive.

As biometrics have become more and more commercially popular, the ease of use of these systems has gone up, while costs have come down. Once the systems are installed, operators need minimal training to get them going – the systems do nearly all the work on their own.

If you’re considering implementing a biometric security program, Pivot can help . Contact us for a free consultation .

4 of the Best-Selling Toys of All Time

As the holiday season approaches, those of us with children in our lives are likely finding ourselves searching for the toy that will bring the biggest smile to our kids’ faces on Christmas morning.

Whether that means scanning the shelves for the latest and greatest toy off the assembly line, or searching eBay for a classic that’s no longer available in stores, finding the right toy for Christmas is a rite of passage for every parent. In fact, some of us might be buying the same toys for our children that our parents bought for us decades ago.

If that’s you, then the toy you’re buying is probably on this list of the best-selling children’s toys of all time.

Cabbage Patch Kids

Created in the 1970s by a 21-year-old art student named Xavier Roberts, the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls are one of the most successful doll franchises of all time. The original dolls were hand-stitched, soft fabric sculptures that Roberts called “The Little People,” and which he sold – or “adopted” – at arts and crafts fairs.

The Cabbage Patch Kids were patented in 1978, and they hit the toy market in 1983. By their 30th anniversary, in 2003, more than 130 million Cabbage Patch Kids had been sold – and the number just keeps climbing.

Barbie

The Barbie doll is, unsurprisingly, the best-selling toy of all time with over a billion dolls sold since she made her debut in 1959. With more than 180 careers, 40 nationalities, and hundreds, even thousands, of exclusive fashionable outfits, the Barbie doll has been a toy icon for millions of little girls for the past 50 years.

Part of the reason for this is Barbie’s adaptability. Mattel, the toy company that owns Barbie, has allowed the doll to evolve as times have changed, releasing Barbie Presidential candidates, Barbie business executives (starting in 1985, no less), and Barbie computer engineers.

Perhaps most notably, in 2016 Mattel introduced three new body types – tall, petite, and curvy – and added a variety of skin tones to better reflect the world that girls see around them.

The Easy-Bake Oven

This famous toy working oven has been beloved by children since 1963, when it was first introduced to the public.

The Easy-Bake Oven has sold more than 20 million units since its debut, and has appeared in several different incarnations throughout the decades. The first model featured a tiny stovetop in addition to the oven and used a regular incandescent light bulb for heat. Later models recalled the kitchen styles of the times: the 1971 Easy-Bake Oven was an avocado green and faux wood creation, while ones from the 1980s and ‘90s look more like microwave ovens than standard ovens.

And the Easy-Bake Oven of today is almost space-age in its design. It’s sleek, curvy, and now comes in two gender-neutral color schemes in addition to pink and purple: black and silver, and blue.

Silly Putty

The creation of this incredibly popular toy was a lucky accident for its inventor James Wright . Wright was an inventor who worked at General Electric in New Haven, Conn. and discovered that combining boric acid with silicone oil created a putty with unusual properties. It’s a “liquid solid: If it’s dropped, it bounces, but if struck with a great deal of force, it shatters. Silly Putty also floats, and will even form a puddle if left alone for a long enough time.

The toy was originally sold in 1950 for $1, and that’s still what an egg of the stuff will cost you today. However, if you take into account the amount of Silly Putty you get, the price has doubled – original eggs contained 1 ounce of Silly Putty, while today’s contain just 0.5 ounces.

Creating a timeless toy requires a healthy mixture of talent, foresight, and plain old-fashioned luck – not to mention the product development experts to help you get your product off the ground. If you need help developing the next Silly Putty, contact us at Pivot!

When Do You Need a Non-Disclosure Agreement?

Non-disclosure agreements: if you’ve ever worked on a product in the development phase with someone else before, chances are you’re familiar with them.

Essentially, non-disclosure agreements are designed to prevent someone else from leaking your idea. But how do you know when to implement one? How do you approach the subject with a partner without seeming like you don’t trust them?

What is a non-disclosure agreement?

First, let’s go over what a non-disclosure agreement is and what it covers.

Also called confidentiality agreements, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are legally binding contracts that keep the signer from disclosing specific, secret information. This information is specified in detail in the contract along with the terms of the confidentiality.

NDAs typically protect trade secrets. A trade secret refers to information that isn’t suitable for a patent, but is integral to a particular product or method – for example, Coke’s formula is a trade secret. Other examples of trade secrets are the New York Times’ methodology for its NYT Bestsellers List and the Krispy Kreme doughnut recipe.

NDAs can also cover other information too, however. Business concepts, selling methods, and marketing plans are also sometimes considered confidential information, and as such can be included in an NDA.

An NDA also includes a time frame for how long the information must be kept confidential, as well as consequences for divulging it.

When should you implement a non-disclosure agreement?

If you’ve just launched your first business, it can feel strange to ask your potential partner or employees to sign an NDA. You may worry that doing so makes it seem like you don’t trust them.

However, implementing NDAs has nothing to do with trust. Like any other contract, an NDA is a legally binding document designed to protect both parties. Since they can cover virtually any information that you want to keep secret, there are lots of situations in which an NDA might be appropriate.

For product designers, NDAs can be especially important. This is because in many situations, public disclosure of a new product or concept can void patent rights – so if you share your idea with someone who then speaks publicly about it, you could find yourself not only with plenty of new competitors, but also without any rights to the patent for your product.

Situations in which an NDA could be desirable include:

• Pitching your product to an investor
• Pitching your product to a potential licensee or buyer
• Giving employees access to sensitive information for a job function
• Doing business with other vendors, and sharing sensitive financial, conceptual, or other information

It’s important to note that venture capitalists typically will not sign NDAs, so if you’re pitching to a VC group it’s probably best to leave the NDA at home. This is because VCs are always looking at multiple deals at one time – they don’t want to prevent themselves from investing in one company because they signed an NDA for another company with a similar idea.

What goes into an NDA?

An NDA will identify both information that is protected, and information that isn’t protected. It’s important to be as specific as possible, to prevent any misunderstandings or accidental disclosures.

NDAs also require that the disclosing party (you) notify the receiving party (the person receiving the confidential information) in writing when any confidential information is being conveyed.

For written information, that could mean placing it in a folder marked “Confidential” or stamping it with the word before giving it to the other party.

If the exchange of confidential information is done in person, through talking, then the disclosing party has to provide written notice that confidential information was conveyed as soon as possible after the disclosure.

Finally, the agreement will also specify the length of time for which the information must remain confidential, and any consequences for breaking the confidentiality.

If you’re going to implement an NDA, make sure you use an experienced business attorney to help draft the agreement – you shouldn’t simply pick a form NDA off the internet. Doing that will likely leave out important points you want to cover. In addition, you can be almost certain that potential employees, investors, or partners won’t sign a form NDA because it’s too vague.

When building your product and business, you may find yourself needing an NDA. Before asking someone to sign, make sure that an NDA is appropriate in your case, and work with a lawyer to draft one specifically for you. The other option, of course, is to simply keep confidential information to yourself.

For more information on building a product-based business, read our ebook “Turn a Great Idea into a Thriving Business.”

10 Inventions We Secretly Want to Buy for Our Dogs

Even though we at Pivot haven’t ventured into the inventions-for-pets industry – yet – that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciatea nice dog high chair, like the one IKEA introduced a few years ago. (OK, OK, that one was an April Fool’s joke…and a pretty good one, if you ask us.)

We’ve got our share of enthusiastic pet parents here at the company, and we’ve been known to buy the occasional doggie backpack or antibacterial, silicone collapsible dog bowl. So here are a few of our favorite pet inventions from around the web, some way out there, some that actually look pretty useful.

1. Hammacher Schlemmer’s Canine’s Rain Coat. What dog wouldn’t want to wear a little coat with a see-through plastic hood that sits just above its head? If you’re thinking “every dog,” well, we might be with you on that. But who knows? Maybe the dogs who live in Seattle and Portland would disagree.

2. Pet Treadmill. Hammacher Schlemmer does it again with the Pet Treadmill, which is just what it sounds like. When your pet can’t get exercise outside, just put her on this treadmill. According to the description, most pets will reap benefits from 45 minutes of walking or trotting. As for how you get your pet to stay on the treadmill for 45 minutes, well, that’s a whole different issue. Someone should invent something to fix that problem.

3. FitBark. The FitBark is a mobile app that works a bit like the FitBit for humans – except this one’s for dogs. Using a sensor that fits onto your dog’s collar, FitBark measures your dog’s sleep and activity cycles and then translates that into BarkPoints. This allows you to monitor your dog’s progress and lifestyle, while – hopefully – encouraging you to become more active as well.

4. One Fast Cat Exercise Wheel. Assuming you have room in your house for a 48” diameter wheel, this kitty exercise wheel could be pretty cool. It’s certainly better than having an unhealthy, overweight housecat. And it’s designed to be extra safe, with no spokes to catch your cat’s paw and wide enough to protect your cat’s joints while they run.

5. The BowLingual Dog Translator. Presented at the 2009 Tokyo Toy Show, this gadget purports to be able to translate your dog’s emotions based on the tone of their voice – or bark. And as of 2011, the translator was going to be released as an iPhone app that would let you post what your dog was “saying” to Twitter.

6. Pet Chime Doorbell. With this paw-operated doorbell, you can teach your dog to let you know when they need to go outside or come back in. It’s a little silly, but it could make a nice change from barking, whining, and scratching.

7. The Paw Plunger. It’s like a golf ball washer for your dog’s paws! Tired of those muddy pawprints all over the house? Get this paw washer – you fill it with water, stick your dog’s paw inside, and the soft bristles get rid of all the dirt, mud, and debris that would otherwise be in your house.

8. The Eyenimal Petcam. Want a dog’s (or cat’s) eye view of the world? All you have to do is attach this lightweight camera to your pet’s collar, and you’ll get a chance to see what it is they do all day – or at least for 2 hours and 30 minutes, which is the battery life. The camera even records audio.

9. The Dog Stairlift concept item. Yep, this is the exact dog equivalent of the stairlift that helps senior humans get up and down stairs when their joints or stability don’t allow them to do it on their own. However, this item wasn’t specifically designed for old or handicapped dogs – it was designed for obese ones. Apparently, an insurance company estimated that over half of the UK’s dogs would be obese by 2022…and hence, they’d need something like this to get upstairs.

10. Haptic feedback harness. We saved the best for last. This haptic feedback harness, originally designed to allow the blind to monitor their dog’s well-being, vibrates in time with a dog’s breathing and heart rate. The harness can be set to notify the handler continuously, or just when those vital signs change significantly. Another useful application of this product is to remotely monitor search and rescue dogs.

Are you working on your next great pet invention? If you need help with any part of the process, contact Pivot for a free consultation. We can help with everything from product design services to business development. Easy (and free!) You should check out our premium features.

Finding a Good Patent Attorney

Deciding whether or not to patent your invention is a big decision. Going through the patent process can be time-consuming, costly, and complex; foregoing the patent process can mean risking monetary losses down the road if someone copies your invention.

If you do decide to seek a patent for your product, one way to cut down on the complexity of the patent process is to hire a patent attorney. But how do you find a reputable one? It’s not as if patent attorneys take out huge ads in magazines or on websites. And once you do find one, how do you know whether what they’re offering and what they’re charging is standard for the industry?

Here are a few pointers when it comes to finding a good patent attorney.

If you haven’t already, join a local inventor’s group.

Thanks to Facebook, MeetUp, and Twitter, it’s pretty easy these days to find inventors’ groups near you. These groups can offer a great support system for even experienced inventors, and chances are you’ll be able to get at least one or two good patent lawyer references from the members.

Another good resource is the United Inventors Association of America, which offers tons of information and resources for independent inventors.

Make sure you’re seeking patent lawyers who have the right expertise for your product.

For most products, any patent attorney will have the expertise they need to help you with your patent.

However, if you’re working in a specialized field like medical technology or software, you should work with an attorney who has specific knowledge and experience in your field.

Get cost estimates or bids up front.

Filing a patent can be an expensive process even if you don’t use the services of a professional. In general, depending on the complexity of your product, the costs of a patent search will range from $1,000-$3,000, with patent filing fees coming in on top of that.

A patent attorney, on the other hand, can cost from $5,000 to $15,000 and up (these costs also depend on the complexity of your product idea). What’s more, costs can grow during the process, so you need to make sure you’re totally comfortable with the amount that your attorney quotes you at the start.

Just as you would with any other service, you may want to talk to several attorneys and get quotes from each before you settle on someone.

Don’t be afraid to look outside your region.

Since patent law is regulated by the federal government, not the states, your lawyer doesn’t have to be located in the same city as you are. And since there’s virtually nothing they’ll need from you that they can’t get via a phone, email, or videoconference session, as long as they’re in the U.S. you should be fine.

This can help you cut down on legal fees, as well, as lawyers in regions like the South, the Midwest, and the Southwest can often be less expensive than those who work in big cities like New York or Los Angeles.

Read the patents your potential lawyer has written.

You wouldn’t hire a housepainter without seeing some of the work they’ve completed. In the same sense, you shouldn’t hire a patent attorney without reading some of the patents he or she has filed. You want to make sure that the invention is clearly, concisely described, and that it’s defined broadly enough to prevent infringement.

IP Watchdog explains this last point well:

“For example, if you describe an invention as always having elements A + B + C + D and then someone makes virtually the same thing but leaves D (or any of the other elements out) they couldn’t possibly be infringing. Why? Because the invention was too narrowly described.”

Look at the pros and cons of working with a firm versus an independent attorney.

When deciding whom to hire as your patent attorney, you need to understand the pros and cons of going with a large firm as opposed to an independent attorney.

Both offer strong benefits. Large firms have a wealth of resources and expertise, so you can feel fairly confident of having all your legal needs met under that one roof. They also cost more to hire.

Independent attorneys can be less expensive, and you’re assured that your work will be handled personally by that one attorney. However, you may need to bring in extra professionals down the road if there are other legal matters that arise.

A good patent attorney can make a huge difference in the success of your patent application, and the future success of your product. To learn more about patents and intellectual property, read our post “Issues in Intellectual Property: Patent Infringement, Protecting Your Rights, and More.”

Inventing 101: What Do Inventors Do?

If you’re someone who looks at a product and thinks “I could design that way better than they did,” or who has a collection of napkin sketches of new product ideas, chances are you’ve considered taking the plunge and inventing a product on your own.

Inventing as a profession has been romanticized for centuries, and that still continues today. When we think of an inventor, we often think of one of two stereotypes:

The first is someone like Rick Moranis in the old movie Honey I Shrunk the Kids – a goofy, scatterbrained nerd who creates oddball machines to do crazy things (like shrink people).

The second is more of a polished scientist, someone who creates their incredible inventions through strokes of genius.

The reality, of course, is that inventors are the same as people in any other profession. Some are nerdy, some really are geniuses, but the majority of them are just plain old regular people. What’s more, the day-to-day of inventing is hardly as exciting as the movies make it look – which is important to know if you’re thinking about creating a product yourself.

So then what do inventors do? Here’s a basic rundown of what it’s like to be an inventor.

Necessity is the mother of invention – seriously.

Successful inventions, and therefore successful inventors, fill needs. Inventing isn’t about spending years creating a product that you personally think is amazing – unless you’re independently wealthy and don’t need a day job, that is.

Inventing is about noticing a need that isn’t being filled, and then figuring out a way to fill that need.

Now, needs differ greatly from person to person, and group to group. Take the BonzaPack, for example: it’s a gear bag for young athletes that can be converted into a simple chair for parents. (Full disclosure: we helped develop this product, which was designed by parents who were tired of kids forgetting cleats, balls, pads, and other athletic gear when they went to sports practice.)

You may not have any need for this product because you don’t have children, or the ones you have aren’t involved in team sports, or they’re preternaturally organized. But to the people that these parents were seeing at their kids’ sports practices each week, this product absolutely filled a need.

If you find yourself noticing things like this, and you’d like to try to give people what they need, then you may have the right mindset to be a successful inventor.

Inventors do a whole lot of research.

Because creating products can take up huge amounts of both time and money, inventors do plenty of research before starting the actual development process.

If you’re a first-time inventor, you probably got the idea for your invention from your day-to-day life. That means you don’t have any market research to fall back on – you’ve got to do it all on your own.

The first thing you have to concern your research with is finding out whether your product has already been invented. This involves searching the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s online database, as well as doing keyword searches online or using Google Patent Search. You can also hire a professional to do a patent search for you, just to make absolutely sure you’re not wasting your time.

If it turns out your product hasn’t been invented, then you’ve got to start researching and planning how you’re going to create it. Depending on what it is, that could involve researching anything from engineering principles, to wedding guest etiquette, to the habits of nocturnal lizards – whatever it is you need to know in order to make your product viable.

As you keep going down the path of invention, research will continue to be a vital part of your work. You’ll need to look into prototyping, materials for manufacturing, marketing strategies and much more. If you’re working with a product development firm, they can handle a lot of this for you.

For more about what inventors do, check out part two of this series.

Developing a Successful Product-Based Business – Part Two

Building a great product doesn’t necessarily mean that the business you build around it will be successful. Being an entrepreneur requires a different set of skills from being a product developer, even if the business you want to set up consists of little more than you and your product.

In Part One of this blog series, we discussed strategic planning and market research, both of which are essential to getting any product-based business off the ground.

But after you’ve done your market research and created a strategic plan, what comes next? The answer: Implementation.

Implementing your strategic plan

Just because a company, business, or organization has successfully developed a strategy, doesn’t mean that it has the tools, knowledge, or resources to successfully implement it.

In fact, many businesses fail because a company doesn’t have the processes or resources in place to put the developed business strategy into action.

Firms with business development expertise, like Pivot, can help you avoid this fate by working with you to align your business with the strategic plan you’ve put in place. This includes:

• Aligning initiatives and resource allotment with strategy. If you want to meet your business goals, you have to align your business initiatives and resources with the strategy you created.
• Designing an organizational structure that reflects strategy. Your business must be structured in a way that will allow you to meet your goals. That could mean adding or removing departments, changing the chain of command, or adding an executive position.
• Engaging staff. Getting everyone in a business behind a new strategic plan can be challenging, but it’s absolutely necessary if the business is going to succeed. Once everyone is on board, rolling out the new strategy can require its own change management plan to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.
• Monitoring progress and adapting accordingly. If you want your strategy to last longer than a few months, make sure it’s flexible. Market conditions change, and you have to be able to adapt to them if you want your business to survive.

Your strategic plan will change over time, as will your business – but if you start by implementing a plan that’s comprehensive and adaptable, you’ll be much more ready to weather the changes that come your way.

Marketing and advertising plan

The final element of successful business development is creating a strong marketing and advertising plan.

In this era of social media and digital marketing, deciding how to allocate marketing resources can be overwhelming. Do you want to spend the time maintaining five social media accounts on five different platforms, or would two or three be sufficient? How do you split your ad dollars among digital, print, TV, and other types of advertising? How do you maximize your ROI for both digital and traditional forms of marketing and advertising?

Answering these questions requires stepping back and creating a complete marketing and advertising plan.

Your market research should have given you lots of information about your target customers and their buying habits. Armed with that information, you can start making decisions about which social media platforms to prioritize, how to spend your digital advertising dollars, and whether or not you should take out ads in traditional mediums.

When all these development pieces come together, your business – and your product – stand a much greater chance of succeeding. If you’re in need of help getting your business off the ground, contact Pivot for a free consultation. To learn more about this topic, and about Pivot’s business development services, read our e-book “Turn a Great Idea into a Thriving Business

Developing a Successful Product-Based Business – Part One

At Pivot, we do more than help inventors develop and refine their products. We help those inventors become successful entrepreneurs.

Starting a product-based business is a bit different from starting one based on services. For one thing, you have to deal with manufacturers, a supply chain, and order fulfillment partners. For another, you have to be prepared to start developing your next product almost as soon as you’re finished with the first one.

This can make managing all the ins and outs of running a business even more complex, especially if you don’t have a large staff to divide up the tasks.

But that certainly doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Even if you’ve got just one or two people on staff, with the right knowledge and lots of dedication, you can make your product-based business into a success. Below are two of the most important components of product-based business development. For more, read our post Developing a Successful Product-Based Business – Part Two.

Strategic planning

If you’re going to create a viable business, you’ve got to adopt a strategic mindset – and that means engaging in strategic planning.

Strategic planning is the process of defining your business’s strategy or direction, and allocating your resources to accomplish this strategy.

Think of your strategic plan as a roadmap for where you want your business to go. When developing it, you should try to answer these questions:

• What kind of business are we running?
• How are we offering value to our customers?
• What products and services have we chosen to include in our portfolio?
• What is the geographic scope of our organization?
• What markets do we operate in?
• What differentiates our business from competitors’ businesses in the eyes of our consumers?
• What are our organization’s strengths?

Doing so will dramatically increase your business’s efficiency and efficacy, as well as your ability to respond to market changes.

Market research

The goal of market research is to do two things:

• Verify that there is a market for your product
• Identify the characteristics of that market and your target consumer

Market research is too often overlooked in the rush to get a product to market quickly, but this is a mistake. In other cases, the research is done haphazardly or on a piecemeal basis. This can make the process very expensive and time-consuming.

Working with a firm that has expertise in market research, like Pivot, can help you streamline the process and accomplish the following goals:

• Identify target consumers. Market research will help you identify who your target consumer is, the expectations they have for your product, how much they’re willing to spend for your product, and factors that influence their purchase decision, among other things.
• Examine current market conditions. This will help you understand the market you’re operating in, including data like price trends for goods and services, technological shifts, consumer preferences, and other relevant industry information.
• Conduct consumer interviews and surveys. A market research team will also allow you to gain insight from actual consumers by helping you develop appropriate outreach materials, organize focus groups, and more.
• Analyze competitor products. When entering into a market, you have to know what kind of products you’re competing with. If there are similar products already available, entrepreneurs must know how they’re going to differentiate their product, whether through cost, features, branding, etc.
• Calculate an anticipated return on investment (ROI). This might be one of the most challenging aspects of starting a business, and it’s one that novice entrepreneurs often have the most trouble with. Creating a product is an expensive process, easily requiring tens of thousands of dollars in start-up funds – either from investors or from yourself – before you ever see a dime in profit. To know whether your business plan is viable, you have to be able to calculate how many products you’ll have to sell to recuperate your start-up costs. In general, if you can’t recoup those costs within a year the plan isn’t viable.

Developing a successful product-based business is a challenge, but having the right help can make all the difference. For more on business development, read our e-book “Turn a Great Idea into a Thriving Business.”