Episode #12: Staying At Home Part 1 Problem Solving And Inventing
Listen Now
Tap Play Below or Listen On iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcasts
With 42 states practicing either partial or statewide stay at home orders, our lives are looking very different than they were just a few weeks ago. We're spending a lot of time at home, and attempting to use technology to maintain our relationships and workplace productivity. All this change makes it the best and worst time to innovate, all at once.
This episode is Part 1 of a 2 part series aimed at guiding inventors on how to nurture their creativity and develop their ideas while stuck at home. Learn by example how to analyze the current day to day struggles that parents, teachers and even kids are facing, and identify potential opportunities for new toy or game inventions. Learn what an Inventors Notebook is and HOW to keep one as a legal record. Additionally, learn how to use an Inventors Notebook to develop your small ideas into big inventions.
Ready to listen? Pop in your earbuds and hit play above, or scroll down and keep reading.
HOW TO INVENT A TOY WHEN YOU’RE STUCK AT HOME
Inventing a new toy idea can be a lot of fun, but what happens when you can’t get outside your home for inspiration? Depending on why you’re stuck at home, whether its because of a worldwide pandemic like the coronavirus, or you’re just having a voluntary creative hermit weekend, you can still find ways to draw inspiration.
For a start, take in the changes around you. Inspiration for inventing a new toy can come from the current state of the world. If you can’t get out to a store to analyze your competition and perform a SWOT analysis, you can always read the news. While reading the news can seem like no fun, what you’ll identify from reading the news is how the world is changing. Recognizing the NEW problems of today will tell you exactly what to invent for the future.
Inventing a toy can be as simple as identifying the opportunity to solve a new problem created due to quarantine.
HOW TO KEEP AN INVENTORS NOTEBOOK
An inventors notebook is typically a bound notebook that if systematically organized, and maintained properly, could provide legal protection in the case a patent filing is challenged. If you intend to keep this book as a legal record, then there are additional guidelines you’ll want to follow.
Legal Record Guidelines
Pages must be permanently bound, so pages cant be removed or added without detection.
Pages must be numbered.
Ideally, you should be keeping a separate book per invention.
Photos or sketches of the invention.
Document focus groups, or playtest sessions and summarize findings.
List any similar products to yours.
Add in any communication you did with others regarding the invention and purchase receipts for any materials you bought to create prototypes or mock-ups of your invention.
Finally and most importantly, you as the inventor need to sign and date every page as you enter new information. But you also need a witness, who fully understands your invention to sign and date the page as well along with the words Witnessed and Understood. And this witness cannot be a co-inventor of the product.