Making
Safe Drinking Water for Life!
| Places
to Collaborate and Produce Your Inventions I've been exploring various Internet venues to see how I might collaborate to produce my First World inventions. The main advantages of collaboration are affordability and community support. Some places charge a small fee others are free. Here 's a short list of what I've found and my impressions. Please share your experiences with me too. Edison Nation - First amateur inventor community I joined. They are the best known and have a TV show on PBS - Everyday Edisons. Edision Nation specializes in product searches where sponsors solicit focused product ideas from the community. Your idea is evaluated in 8-stages where it can be rejected at any stage until it is finally accepted. More often, the process takes three months. No feedback about why your idea was rejected unless you make it to the presentation stage and you are an Insider. Nonetheless, I learn a lot from the forums, videos and blog. They do have some outstanding success stories like Eggies, GyroBowl, and EmeryCat. $25 per submittal, $20 for Insiders. OpenInvo - Equally serves both those who have ideas they are looking to sell and market (Idea Providers), and those seeking new and exciting ideas to enhance and advance their businesses (Idea Seekers). They are similar to Edison Nation in that you submit your idea, wait, and hope for the best. You need to have a well thought out plan about how you want to market your idea. Their application is rather detailed. I signed up as an Idea Provider and submitted one idea. We'll see what happens. Free to submit. Quirky - Social product development aka crowdsourcing - a cross between an employee suggestion system and social network. Members comment, vote, and improve on ideas. The best are considered by Quirky to produce. Everyone involved in making improvements, shares in the rewards. In a nutshell: Good Ideas + Social Skill = $uccess? They do have many product successes. Keep your ideas simple, smart and original – but easy to produce and sell. $10 per submittal, $99 for unlimited submittals/year. Genius Crowds - Another new crowdsourcing venue. Every month there is a new product theme. First, the member community votes and comments on ideas (2.5 weeks). Next, ideas are vetted by an expert panel. The panel picks their favorites. Then, favorites are presented to the general membership. Members vote and comment on their favorites. Finalists are posted with expert commentary. Members have three votes to select the best of the best ideas. The top picks get a shot at being produced. Free to submit. KickStarter - Good for artsy, highbrow, creative arts and technology ideas. People pledge thousands of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields. A project must reach its funding goal before time runs out or no money changes hands. You need more than a good idea here, you also need a business plan too. Free to submit. Indiegogo - They call themselves the "world's funding platform". Indiegogo is a powerful resources for anyone promoting humanitarian causes and bold ideas. Start a campaign and let the world know about it, raise money and go forth! My focus as an inventor started with and continues to be inventing open source water purification tools for the Third World. I’m interested. Free to submit. Forums and Free Resources Invention City - A good resource center with a low key forum. I found some very useful tips for promoting my ideas, self patenting, licensing vs selling ideas, manufacturing products, prototyping and more. I joined this forum. Inventor's Corner - Topic area of the Entrepreneur Fourms. Good expert advise on FAQ about patenting and producing your invention. Moderated discussion, so no nonsense New members are welcome. I joined this forum. Inventor's Forum - At one time the biggest inventor forum with lot's of participants and topics. Unfortunately, new member accounts are closed due to overwhelming problems with spam posts. Still, plenty of information available and well worth the time exploring. |
