Davison Design & Development
In 1989, I started Davison, in the basement of my grandfather's house in Oakmont, a suburb of Pittsburgh. I found that one of the key ingredients of inventing was surrounding myself with piles of "stuff". Many products failed for any number of reasons, but my brain was churning fast, and ideas were beginning to flow quickly.
The challenge was to focus on getting some success, any success. From there I figured I could discover some type of process or system common to every successful idea, one that would help attract a buyer who would take a product to market. The idea of manufacturing my own product was one of the first to go. There were manufacturing companies out there with so much power in the marketplace that it was fruitless to try to compete with them head-on. Instead I would become the conduit to better products that they could sell to their retail customers.
I would license innovative new products to them.
The system that would put Davison on the map, Inventegration®, was distant on the horizon. I simply did it on my wits. Surviving and supporting my vision was the primary concern.
Finally, after several rough years, I had my first invention that actually made money. That it also came from an area of my life that I was passionate about taught me something about how to think about innovation. It often starts with what's close to your heart.