Ever since I read about how single mom Bette Nesmith Graham invented Liquid Paper (and made millions), I've been fascinated by inventions and inventors. (Read more about Bette Graham's story on the Wikipedia.
even spread this fascination with inventions and inventors to my family as we watched with the American Inventor reality TV show. It was amazing some of the good (and bad) ideas that people had.
With all this fascination for inventions, you might think that I spend a lot of time creating innovative gadgets and gizmos. That actually isn't the case. Usually when I come up with a good idea, if I research it I find that someone else has already thought of it. It seems my main creativity lies with words, not gadgets.
If this is something that interests you, InventorSpot is a cool blog that highlights innovations. There's even a forum at InventorSpot for inventors and would-be inventors.
(Note: In no way is this post meant to trivialize the invention process, which can be difficult.)
What about you? Is your business based on your invention? Do you dream of becoming an inventor?
Leave a comment and let us know.
I'm like you. I have those great ideas and then find out someone's already thought of it and making a killing.
My brother, husband, and I have made pretty good teams with inventing games though. The latest one my brother and I cooked up make some pretty awesome homemade gifts for relatives about three years back, but after researching the development process, we decided against trying to patent and market the thing.
On the other hand, my husband and I are planning to submit the role-play game we're developing to RPG publishers once it's completed. It's likely to be three or four years down the road considering he only has time to work on his contributions to it during summer break, but it's coming along. It still falls into the category of words though since what we're creating to sell is the game manual/world book. It's generally up to the RPG publisher to develop the starter kits, so I'm not sure if it counts.
Posted by: Misses E. | November 6, 2007 7:51 PM | Permalink to Comment