In the world of new product development, we the developers and inventors must see the need for a constant flow of newness. It’s the consumers desire to see new items in retail stores that helps pull customers through the doors.

It’s a simple matter of following the path of attraction. We, the inventors, need to attract the manufacturers to our inventions and new products. Manufacturers need to attract retailers to buy these inventions and new products. Retailers need to attract customers into their stores to buy.

With a constant flow of newness, manufacturers are able to present retailers with more new products in hopes of pushing more things to the shelf. Retailers are then able to pass that flow of newness along to their customers. Sure, some of these products may not sell to the consumers, but the fact that the retailer is offering something new will help bring customers through the door.

So how does this constant flow of newness affect Davison’s business model? Through Inventegration, we’re able to offer corporations a constant flow of new products, developed to meet their business model. If you’re familiar with Davison, you’ll know that Inventegration is the process of integrating an invention into a manufacturer’s current way of doing business. Now, using this streamlined process of new product development, our goal is to help inventors get their products — ready with manufacturing drawings, packaging and a product sample — in front of a manufacturer and help corporations find more new products to present to buyers.

A corporation may typically only have one or two new products to show to a potential buyer. Through Inventegration, Davison tries to help our corporate clients take 20 to 30 items to a buyer’s meeting. A buyer may say no to everything in this meeting, but the manufacturer who presented the products will be the ones remembered for knowing what the retailer wants, a constant flow of newness. They’ll be the innovators over others, with little to no new developments in their pipeline.

With today’s constant bombardment of television, movies and video games our greatest natural resource is being depleted — our youth’s brain power. We’ve all heard the cliché, “When I was your age we didn’t watch TV,” but it’s more severe than that. Our youth have become slaves to convenience, and it’s arguably the inconveniences of life that spur innovation and invention.

Now, I’m not trying to say that we’re tapped out on ideas by any means, but our valuable, fresh thinkers devote far more time to analyzing pop culture than thinking critically about ideas and concepts. I’m amazed at how well someone can recite the history of a given actor at any given time, but can’t put their minds to use mechanically and intuitively as a problem solver. It’s like our youth have become smarter, but lazier.

But not all is lost. I try to keep up with the up-and-coming inventors of tomorrow. Recently I read about this talented 17-year-old creator, Mary Masterman. She recently scored a $100,000 scholarship through the Intel Talent Search in Washington this past March. She manufactured, by herself, a spectrograph — a device used to identify characteristics of different kinds of molecules. What’s so interesting isn’t so much what she created, but how she created it. A typical spectrograph costs scientists thousands of dollars. Mary, the innovative teen that she is, built one for 300 bucks. Her goal was to make using a spectrograph affordable for forensic historians and scientists and for the medical and art fields.

According to the New York Times, Mary spent about six months on the project. She used half the time to build it and the other half to make it work. That’s some perseverance for a young inventor. While her peers focus on television, malls, parties or music, she’s transforming our ability to analyze molecules, changing the world.

But Mary is not alone. Discovery magazine recently focused on a Michigan teen who achieved nuclear fusion in his basement. Yup, you read that right. A high school senior essentially smashed together hydrogen atoms to form helium with parts he picked up off of eBay. Thiago Olsen, the teen scientist behind this project, told Discovery that it was “a weekend project” for him.

These two are among the elite inventors and idea people that will be leading our future. I think it’s important we recognize young creatives like Mary and Thiago. I see them as inspiration for me as an inventor, and if you’re an inventor, you should too. If you’re an up-and-coming inventor and think you can’t follow through, just think about how these teens redefined forensic science and physics in their homes with nothing more than a high school education.

It’s funny that sometimes it takes a stranger’s viewpoint to help you see something with clarity. For example, the core of what we do at Davison revolves around our Inventegration® process. When we invent for ourselves, innovate for corporations and design for our clients, we use Inventegration. It’s what lowers the cost of inventing by putting designers, researchers, engineers, builders, graphic artists and more under one roof. Since 1989, Inventegration has been the basis of our business. I guess you can say it’s our “product.”

Recently I was interviewed by a technology reporter. Our short phone call about one aspect of our business led down the rabbit hole into many different directions. When we touched on Inventegration, he asked to know more. As we opened this discussion, he said something interesting. He called our economical inventing process an “enabling technology.” This was interesting for me, to hear something I spent 18 years of sweat and tears to develop called “enabling,” because that’s exactly what it does.

Inventegration is designed to make inventing and new product development affordable through the integration of a budding idea into a corporation’s business model. It enables anyone to invent by reducing production costs by the tens of thousands. When someone would once pay $200,000 to develop two products to show to buyers, now they can do 20 for that price through Invetegration. That allows corporations to show buyers more. It enables inventors in the same way. An entrepreneur or inventor can take an idea from concept to working prototype at a manageable cost. From there, we can attempt and license the product to a company or they can take it to the market themselves.

It may have taken 18 years to invent and perfect, but it was worth it. It’s our contribution and how we want to be remembered by future generations.