Wanting to develop new invention ideas?
Here are some invention idea tools and tips that will turn on your invention ideas tap.
Invention Journaling
Keep an idea / invention journal for faster, better new invention ideas! Creativity expert Dr. Win Wenger says that you get more of what you reinforce. Each time you write down any idea down, from new invention ideas to an idea for a movie, you are reinforcing the art of being creative. This strengthens those fibers in your brain that connect your conscious brain to your subconscious, which in turn helps you to come up with more creative ideas. After regularly writing down thoughts and innovations, you will be coming up with great ideas on a regular basis. For more information on keeping a journal, read the How To Be An Inventor article.
Ideas by Creativity Pool – A free database with unused ideas and possible inventions. Add your own, or bring an existing idea to life.
Invention Scrapbooking
Did you know that you can use a scrapbook to help you invent stuff? Inventing is about improving upon previous ways of doing things. So in order to have new invention ideas, you need to get your head around what you are wanting to improve. A scrapbook is a great way of doing this. Get hold of a magazine, a newspaper or something on the web. Find some picture of a product or an object. Tear it out and stick the picture into a new left hand page of the scrapbook. Now go and find other similar products that are different in minor ways. Stick them all onto the same left hand page. In once glance you now see a broad spectrum of the same kind of product, with slight differences or modifications. At the top of the right hand page, opposite the products, write down “I trust my mind to come up with an improvement upon [the name of the product]”. Once you’ve done this, leave the page to the right clean and move onto the next left hand page, and repeat the process with a new product or object. Do this as many times as you wish. Now close the scrapbook.
Give it a break for a few days, and don’t think about your scrapbook at all. Let your subconscious mind take over, and have confidence in its ability to work on these products. When you feel you’re ready, open up the scrapbook randomly. Let your eyes rest on the very first object you see, and immediately see what comes to mind. Write it down in the space on the corresponding right hand page. Write whatever comes to mind, and doodle and draw if necessary.
Once you’ve gained practice, you’ll see how amazingly original improvements come to you for those products. You are now getting lots of new invention ideas.
Patent Crawling
Did you know that a patent search can spur on new invention ideas? Not only is it inspirational to see what other people have invented, it actually can help give you ideas of your own. Patent crawling is about starting with a particular keyword (for example “sunglasses”), going into a patent document, and then finding other patents that the document references (patents often reference other patents, like a bibliography). Eventually you’ll have an entire web of patents that are all interlinked. What is very interesting is that, even though there can be thousands of patents around a particular keyword, there are always either ‘holes’ in the chain (i.e. missing connections that need innovation – say for instance sunglasses that have built in magnifying glasses), or there are ‘gaps’ in the chain (i.e. existing ideas that can be improved upon – say for instance the way that the lenses of the sunglasses are integrated with the frame). Patent crawling is an incredibly fun and productive way of coming up with invention ideas.
Invention Questionnaire
Print this invention questionnaire out and fill it in to help you gain better insight into your new invention. If you can’t answer a question, that’s great! It means that you need to refine it a bit more until you have an answer.
Invention Fine-Tuning
Use this great free tool, the invention idea generator, that we developed to help you fine-tune your new invention idea.
Persist and Perspire
Thomas Edison once said that success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration (or persistance). So model yourself on one of the greatest inventors of all time, and keep at it. Don’t give up. Go through all the tools above, develop more of your own, and keep the new invention ideas coming. Eventually you could hit upon that one idea that has the potential to go big.
The Next Steps
Once you have developed a few invention ideas, take them to the next step by learning about invention patenting, invention licensing and invention selling.