Here’s a true story, and it happened to me this weekend. I was at a family reunion with a 90-year-old relative who has hour upon hour of entertaining life stories to tell. Her travels were extensive; the people she had met included some of the world’s most complex political leaders faced with massive challenges and personal attacks. Her stories ranged from what life in America was like 90 years ago, when the candlestick telephone was the latest innovation, to how she now uses email as a communication tool.

It’s so telling to sit down and listen to someone who has all these years of wisdom and watch people gather around just to hear her speak. Our ancestors really had it right when they put the oldest people into positions of leadership and teaching of the younger folks. The challenge is to find someone who’s older who has truly lived a compelling life.

For some reason I have always been drawn to people like this. It seems young people just want to get on with things, but don’t really understand all the ins and outs of how the human race operates; as a result they make more mistakes then necessary. Why is it most young people or people who are doing things for the first time don’t seek wisdom from those who are older or more experienced? Common sense says, if you can find a guide who’s been there before or had a life experience that can help you in some way before you start out on your new adventure, you should seek their counsel.

I enjoy being around older people; they’re not trying to prove something to the world, money is of no real importance, influence is of no real importance – they simply want to share with you, if you’re willing to listen … and their wisdom is wonderful.

Similarly, we don’t have all the answers, but we do have the experience. For over 20 years, inventing is all we’ve done; and when people are willing to listen and trust us, we do everything we can and use all of our experience to help.

Companies need “new” today more than ever because all the older products are “used” and resold again and again on e-Bay and other sites.

“Innovation” and “new” keep companies fresh with something to sell that consumers can’t get anywhere else. It’s no wonder that we’re licensing so many new products nowadays.

Several friends of mine own large companies who have been juggling the impact of the Internet on the products they sell. One such company sells paintball guns. They’re the highest quality guns in the world, and yet sales have been declining because so many people are trading their paintball guns instead of buying new ones.

In an effort to have something to market, they’ve come out with their own line of less expensive paintball guns with variations on the same technology that is in more expensive guns – it has led to an expansion of their company’s business in the lower priced market.

The key is to come up with something new and better, so consumers demand it. And while there will always be a trader’s market for people who don’t mind buying used and dealing with the problems that come with used items, by focusing on innovation and new products, you protect your company’s vitality in the marketplace.

I never realized that 20 years in R&D would take a turn into the school curriculum industry, but that’s one of the great things about inventing. When you invent something, usually there are lots of additional uses that come your way when you’re successful. 

We’ve been hard at work for over a year developing a new curriculum to help high school students understand how things are made in this world. After running it by about 45 teachers, principals and superintendents during an in-service in Inventionland, we know we’re on the right track. The curriculum was well received, and getting their help and input to make additional improvements is invaluable.

It turns out that the process of developing a product is really very similar to developing curriculum. First, you do your pre-development work, identify the needs of the marketplace, brainstorm out a solution, then work through a series of concept models until you eventually get the direction that seems best. Then you put forth a great deal of effort to build the finished product, or curriculum in this case, which then gets reviewed and tested prior to product launch.

In today’s curriculum environment, teachers are finding it more and more difficult to capture the imaginations of young people. Our project-based curriculum will enable students to be actively involved in the process of developing new inventions.

By having students go through the sequence of successful products on store shelves, they can see how the development process works and can get an overall picture in their mind that functions as a “how to” map, which builds a belief system in young people. Once you see how a process can be applied to an idea you see it isn’t magic – it isn’t unorthodox guesswork; it is a process you can apply to any invention to get it developed.
 
Currently we’re working with state and local (and soon, federal) representatives on making sure the next generation grasps one of the most basic roots of our economy for the last 200 years – how inventors build the economic model of the U.S. I hope that we’re able to do our part, so that we can continue to lead the world toward the innovation frontier.