Invention and

Innovation
PROJECT MADE
BY
NAVDEEP SINGH

Submitted to
MISS Nupur Sood
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 Fail your way to Success

Many people dream of success.

To me, success can only be achieved through
repeated failure and introspection. In fact,
success represents the one percent of your
work which results only from the ninety-nine
percent that is called failure.

-Soichiro Honda, founder, Honda Motors

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Who invents?

In a given company, ~1% of employees produce 99% of

patents.
Thus, individuals who have mastered the skill of
inventing and patenting are incredibly valuable!

How can we become inventors?

How can we produce inventions as employees?
How can we encourage inventions as business owners?

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Typical Barriers to Innovation

There is no shared understanding of what innovation

means
Little consensus for roles and responsibilities around
innovation
Task versus system orientation
Long term IT contracts often focus on SLAs, not
innovation

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Typical Barriers to Innovation

Volume-based revenue streams view innovation as

counter growth
Management incentives depend on current unit
contribution, not long-term
Main street financial metrics (revenue growth and
earnings) make entrepreneurship difficult
Sales-driven market development strategy

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Typical Barriers to Innovation

Failure to recognize innovation as a discipline, capable

of being learned, capable of being practiced:
No systematic scanning for changes
No systematic analysis and exploitation of opportunities
No systematic commercialization of innovation
Sales pipeline determines portfolio (market has to exist
already)
Rely on others to create new markets
Lack of investment dollars for innovation
Innovators dilemma: new things look too small compared
to existing business
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 Cultural Challenges

There are significant cultural challenges:

Between the researchers, inventors
and entrepreneurs
Between all of the above and investors
and owners
And these relationships change over
time

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 The Myths of Innovation
By Scott Berkun

Describes the methodology of realizing

the potential of modern ideas.

Ideas never stand alone

Ideas without implementation are not inventions
The goodness of the invention is always counter-
balanced by the ease of its adoption
Inventing and implementing always require hard,
consistent work.
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Stages of Innovation Diffusion

We distinguish among:

Early adopters: More educated, innovative individuals who

gain from technology.

Followers: The majority of adopters who see its success

and want to join in.

Laggards: Less-advanced individuals who either do not

adopt or adopt very late and may lose because of the
technology.

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 Factors Affecting Invention Diffusion

Heterogeneity of potential adopters (size, location,

land quality, and human capital).

The individual decision process aimed at improving

well-being (profitability, well-being, risk
minimization).

Dynamic forces that make technology more

attractive (learning by doing, learning by using,
network benefits).
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 And Suddenly, the Inventor
Appeared
By Genrich Altshuller (TRIZ method)

Suggests methods of thinking that can resolve many technical contradictions:

Do it inversely
Change the state or physical property
Do it in advance
If it cannot be done completely, do it partially
Fragment and/or consolidate

TRIZ focuses on physical and chemical solutions

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Elements of Invention

Technical solution to a problem

New
Distinct from known solutions
Produce useful effect

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How to invent?

Consider a problem worth solving

Ex: gooey candy melts at high temperatures. How to dip
in warm melted chocolate to form chocolate covered
candy?
Identify physical/technical contradiction
Resolve them without creating new contradictions!
One solution can be to separate conflicting requirements
using time or space.
Ex: first freeze the candy center. Dip into chocolate. Store at
room temp to defrost center.

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Discovery Inventions

Mental Process and Real World Testing

The Scientific Method
What is the Problem?
Hypothesis
Methods of observation
Experimental methods
Obtain results
Interpret results: hypothesis testing
Revise hypothesis
Modify study design
Reiterate
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How to Identify the Real
Problem
Rewrite the problem in 10 different ways
List causes of the problem
Look at what is influencing the product
Redefine the problem in order to come up
with different, innovative solutions
service is too slow vs. customers are too
demanding
Set innovation goalposts that have a
variety of solutions to your problem
between them
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 Most inventions improve
existing systems
How to improve a perfectly functional mechanism?
The 4 periods of technological improvement
1. Selection of parts for the system. (Make it work)
2. Improvements of parts. (Make it work faster/cheaper/smaller)
3. Dynamization of the system. (Make it
dynamic/adaptable/mobile and moveable)
4. Self-development of the system. (Make it self-adaptive)

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Source: And Suddenly, the Inventor Appeared, by Gentrich Altshuller

Improve without impairing!

Inventors improve a single part or characteristic of the

system without impairing other parts or characteristics
of the system or adjacent systems

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Improvements from
organizational perspective
Cost leadership path
Separating the organization from others by
providing the lowest cost option
Product/Service differentiation path
provide the most unique products/services
available
can be achieved by marketing unique products, branding these
products, or holding a specialized patent

Customer segmentation path

Being the only organization to target a
unique customer segment within a market
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Improvements from organizational perspective

Superior process path

Offering the fastest, highest quality, or most desired
customer service in the marketplace
Superior distribution path
Offering the customer a preferred distribution and delivery
option

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How to Decide upon
Future Destination
Identify key factors to the success/failure of
your organization in the marketplace.
Identify how to take advantage of future
marketplaces, trends, and key success factors.
Change your view of the customer, product line,
service level, etc.
Find new options by asking extreme questions.
What if the customer does not need us
anymore?
Determine what you want your organization to
be famous for.
Define the organizations future in a meaningful
way.
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How to Uncover Insights

Customer needs- select the customer

group of your interest and list their
needs/problems and how you want to
solve those needs/problems
Emerging technology- figure out how
emerging technology can be
advantageous to your customer base
The marketplace- figure out how your
industry is changing/growing
Your organizational needs- find out
what your organization would need to
fill the customer needs with the new
technology and changing marketplace
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Successful Business
Thought Process
yesterdays problem todays solution tomorrows
problem near-future solution future problem
future solution

Tomorrows problems can be predicted from the present

situation.

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Considering Trends

Fad- short term mania for a

product/service that quickly dies off;
good for quick cash
Shift- easier to see and predict that
Fads. Last longer. Change in direction
(shifting from television to internet as
source of entertainment)
Leap- dramatic change in direction.
Giant step towards future. Hard to
predict (like Human genome product)
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How to See the BIG Picture as an Employee

The BIG idea must be simple

The simpler it is the easier for customers to
understand it
Idea must be new and better
Needs to have a quality that is important enough to
be a selling point to clients
Idea must be proven to manager and potential
customers
Even if it is a new idea some parts of it will have
existed before in some industry
Idea must be quickly and easily implemented
to the existing system
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How an Individual can Achieve Systems Thinking

Look at how your task is related to part of a

bigger process

Figure out how your project is related to the

organization in which you work

Look at how your work relates to the market

place
How will it affect your companys other
products in the marketplace?
How will competitors react?

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 Where do ideas come from?

Over 60% of inventors get their ideas from:

Brainstorming
Collaboration
Experimentation
The study of other fields
Journaling (writing down their thoughts)

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Source: The Myth of Innovation, by Scott Berkun

 Seven Sources of Innovation
The unexpected the unexpected success, the unexpected failure, the
unexpected outside event;
The incongruity between reality as it actually is and reality as it is
perceived to be or as it ought to be;
Innovation based on process need;
Changes in industry or market structure that catch everyone unawares...
Demographics (population changes);
Changes in perception, mood, and meaning;
New knowledge, both scientific and nonscientific.

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Peter Drucker: Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Deciding Which Ideas to Pursue

Identifying the real problem is important in finding the

real, lasting solution to the problem.
Questions to ask from a business
perspective:
Is there a customer need?
Is it feasible?
Can we generate significant revenues and
profits from this?
Does it play to our strengths?
What technical challenges would we face
to do this in the real world?
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How to Sell your idea

Understand your audience- there are

four different type of people
1. cares about the numbers
2. cares about the tasks
3. cares about the people
4. cares about the BIG-picture strategy
Distinguish between adults and kids
Adults care about the products features
first and brand second
Kids care about branding first and features
second (kids wants whats cool)
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How to Sell your idea Cont.

Understand that everyone goes through

multiple phases before buying an
idea/product
Prepare a prototype- this will help your
ptential buyers fully understand your
idea
Presentation- keep it simple
Dont overload the buyers with facts
Limit your use of jargon
Create a demand for your idea as a
solution to a problem
Sell the problem so that the buyer will
WANT the solution
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How to Sell your idea cont.

BE passionate
Connect with your potential idea-buyers

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Assessing Value Influential
Factors
Likelihood of third parties using the solution (now or in
the future)
Demand for the solution (cost reduction and/or new
feature)
Whether base invention patented (fundamental v.
improvement)
Key enabling/lynchpin solution
Whether the invention is of general applicability
Whether the invention is useful to a key competitor

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Assessing Value Influential Factors (cont)

Breadth of the solution (available alternatives)

Likelihood of solution being an essential feature of an industry standard
Whether infringement is detectable
Whether invention outside core industry
Simplicity of solution
Importance of innovation to future company products and/or services

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Technical Documentation of
Inventions
Conception:
Formation in the mind of an inventor of a permanent embodiment of an operative
invention.

Invention

Creative Inventions
E.g., a space ship, computer software design, new pencil, etc.

Discovery Inventions
Asking questions of the real world and getting answers
Design an experiment

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Technical Documentation of
Inventions
Actual Reduction to practice
(for Inventorship, Novelty and Non-Obviousness)
E.g., build it, clone it, sequence it, express it, test it
For self-enabling inventions, draw it.
E.g., a pipettor, a gene chip, a bioinformatics program, new chemical
structure. If you can draw it, you can make it.
Do the Experiment
Test the hypothesis; provide working example: A did B (strong)
Interpret the results
Eliminate confounders in the experiment (stronger)
Negative controls
Positive controls
Calibrate the study methods, reproduce results
Generalize the discovery to other areas
Provide a variety of working examples (still stronger)

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Technical Documentation of
Inventions
Constructive Reduction to Practice (Filing date)
(For Novelty, Prior Art and Inventorship)

File a patent application

Description
State of the filed before the invention
Contribution embodied by the invention

Prophetic examples
A does B If it is not apparent that A does B and there is no proof, then this is merely a place holder.
Prove up the invention later (CIP, Declarations showing actual results)
Teach others to make and use
Dont keep the best mode secret

Claims
Metes and bounds of the property right
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 Technical Advice on Scope

Is the invention complete?

Theory may be incorrect or subject to revision
Methods may have problems (reproducibility, accuracy)
Results may be inconclusive (e.g., scattered data)
Conclusions may not be fully justified (wishful thinking?)

Scope of invention is hard to ascertain in advance

More study is always needed in other/related areas
E.g., breast cancer, prostate cancer, adenocarcinomas, etc.
Revise hypotheses or theories
Broaden based on mechanism?

Equivalents are hard to ascertain

Infringement under the Doctrine of Equivalents:
Function, way, result 37
 HOW TO KILL A CREATIVE IDEA
Our own self-criticism is often so strong that many novel and unusual ideas never
even reach our conscious awareness.
1. Don't be ridiculous.
2. We tried that before.
3. It costs too much.
4. That's beyond our responsibility.
5. It's too radical a change.
6. We don't have time.
7. We're too small for it.
8. That will make other equipment
obsolete.
9. Not practical for operating people.
10. Our competitors are not doing it
11. We've never done it before.
12. Lets get back to reality.
13. Thats not our problem.
14. Why change it, it's still working okay
15. You're two years ahead of your time.
16. We're not ready for that.
17. It isn't in the budget.
18. Can't teach an old dog new tricks.
19. Top management will never go for it.
20. We'll be the laughing stock.
21. We did all right without it.
22. Let's form a committee.
23. Has anyone else ever tried it?
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Adapted from Measurable Performance Systems, Inc.
 you ! !
ha n k
T
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