The Key To Your Future
Just about every “yet to be successful inventor” I know has the following traits in common A) they have tons of Great Ideas, B) they don’t have a lot of money and C) they have a multiple of reasons why, they don’t develop those ideas into successful products. The Successful Inventors I know start off with A). They too have a ton of Great Ideas but they take the bull by the horns and develop the best ones into commercially viable products. How do they do that?
They start by determining the state of the art by doing patent, product and industry searches. You need to be an expert in the field you are inventing in to make a valuable contribution to it. Then, guided by the Voice Of the Consumer or Customer (VOC), they develop a commercially viable product but how do you get the VOC? Market Research, plain and simple. If you don’t know the needs and wants of your target market, how are you ever going to fulfill them.
Jennifer Dale of www.insideheads.com is a market research junky. She is addicted to finding answers to questions that most other people would never even think to ask. As a practicing researchaholic myself, I found this woman to be a fountain of knowledge with incredible focus.
She will show you how to define your demographic, conduct a number of different information gathering techniques, use that information to create a profile or define additional issues that need to be addressed, the difference between quantitative and qualitative analysis, etc., etc.. What you will learn in one afternoon will astound you but it doesn’t stop there. Through her website she can help you do it yourself or do the research for you.
One of the most important things any professional and inventor needs to do is evolve with their field of expertise. Ms. Dale has done so with a vengeance. She worked with Amy Yoffie at Research Connections to develop two of the first web-based online platforms for conducting surveys and focus groups. Jennifer also co-authored Qual-Online, the Essential Guide and published innumerable articles regarding the subject. One that I enjoyed was Made Marian (How sex surveys launched online qualitative research).
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