Sunday, June 03, 2007

Round peg. Square hole.

With our efforts to sell RE:tie grinding on, I found this piece on selling invention in BusinessWeek to be interesting, and was moved to comment: Think Like an Inventor

Appreciating the second subhead says 'The Essential Ingredients for Technological Innovation', I am also looking at the one preceding it: 'Making innovation happen'.

Having just won a gold medal for an invention - most definitely bringing two diverse products together - at a international competition, in this regard I'd have to suggest the first needs to be split, and '..aided by collaboration' placed at the top.

With few exceptions, having a great idea is the easy part; selling it into 'the system' is the tricky bit. And, I would venture, few innovators have the skill sets or personalities to both come up with the idea and then negotiate the suit mentality-driven waters to bring it to market.

Yet, oddly, almost every aspect subsequently seems to expect round pegs to become square in pushing things through.

Of course one has to work harder to get luckier and meet half way, but I believe there is huge opportunity, especially at public-funding level, in looking to bridge the skill sets between the creators and those who can market them to create effective sales complements.

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