A Case In Point

Re: [spiers] A Case In Point

Why would you want to give your product innovations away to others? So they can
make the big money? A new idea can on an old product can be very profitable.
Nobody is a limitless fountain of creativity, so run with your ideas.



Paul Snyder wrote:
I enjoyed the article and look forward to using the new product.

What is not clear from my reading of the article was whether the idea
leader, in this case Ms. Adler, did indeed end up with a royalty-based
arrangement or not. It seems that she paired with a designer hired by
Target, and as such performed more of a designer role.

I am interested in John's take on this. I was discussing John's biz
model recently in Hong Kong with an acquaintance who validated the
model. She also suggests that one can sell concepts to, or form royalty
arrangements with, design houses who need a steady flow of new ideas.
She is doing this herself. It seems that for those of us who can
innovate frequently, it may be a way to earn based on idea strength (if
royalty-based and the product sells) and spare us from the burden of
running the other aspects of an importing business. Or perhaps the
percentages from royalties is relatively small compared to the profit
margin built into an import biz model? I'm very curious about this.

Thanks,
Paul

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 5:00pm, wileyccc@aol.com wrote:
>
> I do not know the rules of posting on the message board so I though I
> would
> send you this article and you can decide what to do with it at your
> discretion:
>
> http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/health/features/11700/index.html
>
> Although it does not get into the details of design it is a great
> example
> taking an old product that has had little innovation for a long time
> and
> revamping it. Also there has been recent discussion on the board of
> getting our ideas
> stolen from bigger companies. I think that any one of us would be
> extremely
> lucky if a company "stole" our ideas in this way.
>
> Although you do not advocate the use of patents that does not mean the
> same
> process that the lady in this article went through is not useful.
> Instead of
> selling the patent to Target, we could sell our "idea" to the company
> that
> makes the bottles and let them worry about the patent. They could sell
> the newly
> designed bottles to the stores in the same way that they do now. In
> line with
> your preferred method, we would just take our small percentage of each
> bottle
> they sell.
>
> What do you think?
>

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