However, the entrepreneur should be cautious when selecting features and selling price. Basing selling price on extremely high volume can be tempting – but you may be in a situation of negative margin from introduction until (if ever) you reach the volume estimate. That means negative cash-flow from the onset – which may kill the company before you ever break-even. So, perform your bottom-up and top-down cost estimates – if there is a huge disconnect you may need to cut back on features/capability and/or adjust target market/demographic (higher selling price) to make the economics work. These iterations and cost engineering are essential at the beginning stages of product design.

So what does the inventor do?

A few possible options and the philosophies that drive them:

1. Partner aka Joint Venture- The inventor should partner with anyone that can help the product get off the ground. If our inventor gives partners equity or royalties, the partners are more likely to produce. Partners in this case might provide business development, prototypes or funding (best case scenario all of the above). However this strategy can become difficult with the different groups performing different tasks at the same time. The inventor becomes more of a supervisor of several corporate departments than an inventor

2. Do it alone – A classic inventor perspective that is enforced by misconceptions of intellectual property theft, good ideas are good ideas forever and I can do anything. Time to market is important and this option can take years (even with help).

3. Raise $ – Money can solve everything and the inventor could focus on raising funds to purchase the service of the additional pieces. Unfortunately this strategy can be a catch 22, where the inventor needs to both prove the business plan and build a prototype to get funding.

4. Abandon – If I can’t do it, no one can. Obviously the worst option for a great idea. Fear of failure, idea theft and being taken advantage of drive this hopeless perspective that many “idea” people without prototypes follow like a religion.

But what is an inventor to do?