Many times inventors come to us with their best idea, other times we are presented with the top three and asked which is best. Being confronted with delivering this type of input is difficult for a number of reasons, but mainly because we want to put resources into the best one. The difficulty lies in evaluating the ideas by market size, market pain, price (point flexibility resulting in better margins), development (cost & time), manufacturing costs, competition, potential penetration %, intellectual property.

To evaluate the designs I am going to use a figure from a prior post about evaluating design options. Check out that post to see how to fill in the chart, don’t forget to add in the other variables.

The variables reflect both the good and bad aspects of possible outcomes:

The goal of most of clients is to make money off an invention (market size, penetration %, price points / margin).  However, everyone has a finite amount of funding available, so then the goal is to make the most money with X amount of money (development & manufacturing cost).  We all have an amount of patience and few are willing to wait years to make profit, so then we add time to market to make the goal: make the most money with $X in T months (development time).

No one wants to get to market only to be met by an injunction and a lawsuit claiming infringement or only to be ripped off a few months later (IP status).  Also a product profitability can be seriously hurt when a close competitor alters their product to directly compete with your idea (competition).

Personally, when I first started inventing I had a hard time with this.  I remember bringing 20 ideas to a former mentor and being shocked and overwhelmed when I was told to pick out the top two.  I worked on the two, one of which branched out into two discrete products, so then I had three (lets call them A, B, C).  I believed that if I worked on three ideas, one would pan out and hit it big, a type of portfolio approach.  I continued working on the products and the marketing while seeking advice from S.C.O.R.E.. I realized that I needed some type of prototype, but I only had the technical skills to prototype A, so I focused on A. Eventually I was confronted with an interesting question, “If you were to ask for money (bank or investment) how much would you ask for?” This question led me down the path to find out the manufacturing costs for each of the three ideas. As it turned out A & B would cost far more than I was willing to spend or ask for, so I was left with C, an idea I had spent 20% of my time and effort on.

Another interesting thing happened. By focusing on one idea, I was able to make incredible progress. I know that if I had split my time, resources and sanity between three ideas the end results would have been far less.  Developing a product almost requires living day and night in that market and technology.

Back to our position on evaluation, I think about venture capitalists.  These investors know a specific technology or industry incredibly well.  They know all the players, the issues, past failures, technology trends and opportunities of a very small area.  These investors are sent thousands of plans a year make a few investments and the general success rate of their investments is one out of seven.  Now, we are not market experts, we are product development experts.  While we understand how to get products from idea to manufacturing and can help with some of the marketing i.e. packaging and branding, we don’t understand a lot of different customer segments very well, or at least well enough to make that determination when first exposed to an idea.

As you can see this decision involves a lot of work.  And while we can help define these variables with an opportunity analysis and feasibility study, it is really up to you (and your gut) as to which idea deserves to move forward.  Regardless of what idea you chose (and how you proceed), you are going to have to live with it, work on it and spend money on it.  Using this evaluation system, although not perfect and whose results can be easily ignored is important to acknowledge the strenghts and weaknesses of each idea.