An Invention's best qualities?

[Intrigued]

What do you think makes any invention a success. Say a set of rules, guidelines, etc. etc.?

Thanks for the feedback in advance,

[Worm]

I would guess the novelty of it. There are a lot of things that I could really use, that get pushed to the side because of something I think I want.

[Corey]

As someone who has invented lots of feasible things but never seen one to market, I have to say there is only one thing you need. Tenacity for the business process.

I have a killer invention sitting on my desk right now for example, came up with it a couple weeks ago, only Eric, Colin, and the owner of a related retail store have seen it. I looked into it from all angles, great market, high existing demand, and it's a simple little plastic/rubber device which one could manufacture and get to market very easily, I'm just not into filling out forms and applying for things, there's too many expensive obstacles between "here" and "there". I see tons of bad ideas on the market and tons of good ideas not on the market, this leads me to believe that it 100% in the follow up and the capacity of the inventor to wade through a system which is completely stacked against them from day one.

[Intrigued]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

[eric_darling]

There have been loads of commercially successful inventions that were basically worthless to the human condition. But I'm not sure that's what you were asking, Intrigued... Do you mean commercial success or some other kind of success?

[Intrigued]

There have been loads of commercially successful inventions that were basically worthless to the human condition. But I'm not sure that's what you were asking, Intrigued... Do you mean commercial success or some other kind of success?

Ah ha!

Well, for this this dicussions eric... I was looking more at financial return, and thus high popularity.

[Corey]

I remember one guy from MIT invented a really cool machine which could bring cheap eyeglasses to the poorest and remotest nations in the world. The machine could make any type of prescription quickly and cheaply out of a plastic mould which gets filled with a liquid, and it could be manufactured and sold for only $5,000. If he had been motivated by profit, those machines would be in every corner of earth by now because the big wheels would have been put into motion but the guy was an idealist and sort of against the profit angle, and as far as I know, there's almost none of them out there as a result. Good guy, but self defeating.

On the other hand the guy who invented cheek implants is probably howling it up in a Club Med somewhere.

Tricky market these days. Even if you are giving something away for free, the infrastructure is pretty much only accessible under certain conditions. On the other hand, the internet is a great thing which can allow one to circumvent the entire nasty process if used properly.

It sounds like a cliche but the key to commercial success is marketing. Very few people are good at it in the purest sense, i.e. figure out what people pay for then provide it. Most people try to make the market bend to them, this can still work enough to get by if you have something with broad enough appeal, but to really hit a home run the big inventions nowadays are the ones which cater to the market conditions.

[rhosk]

It sounds like a cliche but the key to commercial success is marketing. Very few people are good at it in the purest sense, i.e. figure out what people pay for then provide it. Most people try to make the market bend to them, this can still work enough to get by if you have something with broad enough appeal, but to really hit a home run the big inventions nowadays are the ones which cater to the market conditions.

Well said.