Medical Device
Innovation
for Improved Lives
Together
How to start the innovation process
How do you know when you (and your idea) are ready for the big time? Here are a few tips to show you the way, or remind you if you're already en route.
The qualities of an inventor
The qualities most attribute to successful inventors are commitment, curiosity, passion, time, and perhaps most importantly resilience. Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway and more than 400 other inventions, said inventors can’t be afraid of failure. “The most consistent character I have ever seen of people (who) succeed is that they never give up. They fail way more often than most people because they are trying to do something that other people haven’t done yet.”
Change your approach
James Dyson, inventor of the eponymous vacuum cleaner, says starting off with a bad idea and working through variations of it is often the best route to finding an innovation. “What you actually end up with at the end is something completely different to the idea you started with,” he told open2net. “But it works and you don’t even think of it as a eureka moment. You get there by processes.”
According to science and technology author Steven Johnson the process of innovating starts with a “slow hunch,” and a lot of trial and error. Try starting with a bad idea or hunch, analyze what makes the idea bad, address those issues and see where it takes you.
Clarify your goals
Once you have an idea for an invention in mind, clarify your objective. Is your idea an efficiency tweak or an incremental innovation on a process or product that exists already? Is it an evolutionary improvement that takes the product to a new level? Is it something more radical, creating something entirely new that people didn’t even know they needed? Make sure you understand what you hope to achieve and keep that goal in mind as you continue on your innovation path.
Visit the Med Tech Innovation Forum
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination"
- A. Einstein