If you consider yourself an inventor, then you probably know the key steps to bring life to your inventions.
However, if you have a cool invention that can better society or bring you huge profits, then you have to start familiarizing yourself with the process of bringing life to your inventions.
An idea is just an idea; nothing less, nothing more. You have to work on that idea and how it can be created into a real thing. So, a few more days pass by and this idea in your head is really making sense.
A few more weeks pass by and now you’re determined to make it work. How will you do it?
The hardest question to answer is probably this one. This cannot be solved with a simple flip of a switch; it takes a lot of hard work as we mentioned.
So, to help you understand the process, here are 5 key steps to bring your invention to life. Make sure to follow this guide as we’ll highlight some very interesting things.
1. Educate Yourself
Knowledge is power and it comes from education. While we don’t exactly mean this in a sense of school education but in a way of reading and researching on the topic.
You have to really educate yourself on how the entire invention process works, how the business operates, and how you can benefit by being up to date.
When on the subject of reading, there are very cool books out there that can help you get started. And this information isn’t expensive at all; all it takes is to do a quick Google search.
2. Organization
You’ve somewhat familiarized with the process, and now it is time to move on to the next step.
While number one isn’t really that important at this moment, it is advised to know certain things which you’ll use later on.
The best way to move forward with your idea is to keep track of the entire progress. It will get quite messy at some point, and this is where your organization will come into play.
This is why every experienced inventor, everybody that has written an invention book, or anything of the kind, recommends keeping a journal.
This journal will come particularly useful when the time for patenting your idea comes. It will allow you to keep a chronological order of every bit of progress made, as well as, serve as proof in someone who decides to steal your idea.
3. Research
It will be impossible to bring life to your invention without doing proper research beforehand. This is because you never know if someone else has already patented your idea.
If this is the case, and you don’t know about it, all your hard work will be flushed down the drain. But not only that, there is a very important reason as to why research is important.
Before going into production and patenting your idea, you have to do your research and find whether your idea will actually help someone. If there is no market for it, then you won’t sell to anyone. This will put you in a debt and with an invention that no one has use of.
Conducting market research will determine whether you should scrap the plan or continue moving forward. If there is a market for your invention, then you go forward. If there isn’t a market, then you scrap and start all over again.
This is the reality that every investor has to go through, and does not exclude anyone else.
When on the subject, the experts over at Invent Help can help you kick start your invention career by offering expert advice on how to move forward and what to do. You can click here if you’re interested in such support.
4. Patent Research
We mentioned researching to determine whether your idea can actually be patented. This is a sub-category of research and a key step to move forward.
While hopefully, you understand why this is important, we simply cannot create this guide without going into deeper meaning.
If you have an idea that you think is the next best thing since sliced bread, then you will put a lot of work into giving it life. However, and this is very important, if you don’t do patent research you’ll end up working for nothing.
Your idea will be finished because someone else has the rights to that idea. This is why patent research is so important.
Never exclude it, never avoid it, and always conduct patent research if you want to make sure that your idea is unique.
5. Develop a Prototype
An obvious key stepping stone on the road to giving life to your invention is to create and develop a prototype of it.
Congratulations, you have a unique idea that has patented as yours. Now it’s time to create the prototype that will help bring investors to your project.
There are two ways to approach this key step. You eighter create it at home, if possible, or you approach a manufacturer and pay them to create your prototype.
While we would always advise to create and develop by yourself, sometimes this isn’t a feasible thing. Complex machinery, if this is your idea, can be almost impossible to create on your own. In most cases, with these inventions, you need a giant in the industry to create the part and the components that will make the machine tick.
But we’re betting that you aren’t a person that is developing complex machinery that can better humanity in the way we construct buildings.
That’s not to say that you aren’t, but we’re also betting that you know what you’re doing if you’re inventing such things.
So, let’s say you have a smaller gadget and you can create it at home. Before you go ahead and assemble the prototype, it’s important to do your research again.
We know, if you knew that inventing is so boring you wouldn’t have done it. However, this is also very important as you can find little bits of information that will prove useful. You can also research extra features to add, what type of material to use, and relevant things that will make your prototype excellent.
The final step is to present your prototype to people and gather investments for full-scale production.
Nicola Holder 