The light bulb is on and it’s flashing green, an idea just popped up in your head… Ding!
You can’t help it; you want to turn those creative product ideas right now into a tangible thing. But, what should you do first? What is the right plan?
Developing a unique product that sells out to the masses requires time, effort and money. Truthfully, unless you throw those elements into the mix, the success of your idea for a new product won’t see the light of day.
A bright concept is no good if you can’t turn it into a salable good. So, before you start telling your next-door neighbor about it, or running to the first company that would buy into your idea, you need to do a few things, first.
A product idea is a concept or a plan for a new good or service that a person or an organization wants to bring to a specific market.
Sure, it’s difficult to decide if a product is worth investing in or is not worth pursuing at all.
To help you get through this aching dilemma, here’s what a winning creative product idea looks like:
Turning an amazing concept in your head into a physical new product follows several processes that can be intricate and demanding for you.
Needless to say, learning and keeping up with these steps can give you a strong insight on how to effectively bring your product to the market, and make it a sellout.
Your idea sounds great, but is it truly yours?
You know, great ideas produce amazing things, but they’re also still intellectual properties that you can’t touch. You need proof that these inventive ideas are all yours by means of documenting them in a journal, writing everything that relates to your invention; how it works and what’s it for.
This first step serves as “you” patenting your idea. It also helps in tracking your patent processes, and most importantly, serves as evidence for your work.
Just because you haven’t seen or heard of this product doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. So, before you pour out resources into developing new product ideas, it’s necessary to check first and do your research.
You can do a simple free patent search with the United States Patent and they’ll let you know if someone has patented your idea. You could also do a general search and see what’s out there that might be related to your product.
Okay, your digital products ideas of selling online courses and eBooks are great, but how many people or companies would actually buy this business product idea?
About 90 % of all patent ideas actually don’t make cash for the creator. So, you can’t be too sure that there’s a market for your product, no matter how attractive the concept is, unless you perform thorough market research.
Ask yourself: Are people going to purchase this?
A lot of time, money and effort go through the creation of a product. Thus, to know more about the market is to be prepared for the possible risks and obstacles that may come along the way.
A prototype is an initial model of your invention like turning your innovative product ideas into a tangible form.
Building a prototype will help you solve your design flaws or come up with new additions to enhance your original work before you launch your product.
But besides that, this concept mock-up will also serve as product validation of your idea to licensees or potential investors.
Here are some things to remember when prototyping your invention:
Before you start creating a prototype, draw your idea, and then build a concept model. If a complete working model is rather expensive to prototype, you can use engineering software, a digital sketch that a company can use to manufacture a prototype for your invention.
Now that you have a mock-up of your business product ideas, you are now ready to delve into the market — time to fill a patent and secure your idea.
So, a patent is a sort of intellectual property that gives you an exclusive right to your invention legally from others who want to make and sell it without your consent for a period of time.
While you can accomplish the patent application yourself, we don’t suggest filing it personally, not until you have an expert patent professional take a look at it first.
The reason for this is to avoid any legal problems in the long run that may enable your competitor to copy your product due to an inadequacy in your written patent.
Great! You’ve finally filed a patent. Your next step is to bring it to the market. But how are going to do that? Well, start with a business plan.
How do you plan to make money? Do you want to power up a startup? Are you planning to sell your bright concept to another company?
There are upsides and downsides to whatever route you take. With licensing your product, you might only receive around two to five percent in royalty fees. But then again, you also don’t have to carry that heavy financial burden of running a business.
It happens! You fall into the trap of creating a new product that isn’t “new” in the market after all.
Well, to not drop into the usual product development pitfall as everybody else, you can take our advice and follow these guidelines to make sure you’re offering something truly unique and special.
When performing patent research, the most essential thing to do to narrow down your search is to identify the scope of your invention, beforehand. Then after, you can start looking at existing domestic and foreign patents.
You can save time and money by concentrating on innovation rather than replicating other work.
Some product innovations examples are cellular phones, the internet and the computer.
Being knowledgeable about who your competitors are and what your customers are interested in buying can help nail your product positioning and avoid developing a product or a service that’s already there.
You can use social media or talk to customers to gather valuable information. You can also look at the competition; the products and the marketing.
The important thing is to conduct thorough research to create meaningful conversations with the players in the industry, your potential customers and even the people outside that industry.
Essentially, the next thing to do is to look at and analyze the existing products. This involves understanding the market trends and customer touchpoints throughout the customer journey.
To achieve a thorough analysis, you can follow these steps.
Through this, you can understand the market better and create something that stands out. And oh, don’t forget to note any legal issues when developing a new product, check if any aspect of your concept is already patented to steer clear of any court trouble.
An effective way to engage with customers is through customer surveys. This is incredibly valuable in gathering information on your customers’ sentiments, the current competition and the pricing models, helping you come up with the best product development approach.
Additionally, engaging with potential buyers will also help you land opportunities for innovation and come up with strong product development strategies.
With expert advice, you can avoid wasting time on fake product ideas, dodge product development pitfalls and learn more about the existing products in the market.
Thought leaders can also teach you how to create a new product that’s completely separate, and appealing to buyers.
Turning creative product ideas into something invaluable and profitable is tedious work.
But by all means, if the workload becomes too heavy to carry, you can always outsource support and hire a virtual assistant.
It takes years for inventions to land on the shelves. Just remember though, that the most pivotal point when developing a new product is to offer new value to the customers.
If you can do that and bear those tips in mind, you won’t have much trouble creating something unique that customers would scurry to flock.