What do you do if you have a great idea?

Right. I am always coming up with new ideas for things and some of them I think are pretty cool ideas. But they tend to be big scale ideas or ways of doing things as opposed to a new invention or something I could work on by myself.

So what do you do if you have a great idea but no way to put it into practice? Who can you tell?

For example what if the IDEA of the telephone had never been dreamed up but the technology around was able to make phone calls. What would you do if you had the original idea but had no idea how to get it out there?

Who can you trust and how can you get an idea off the ground?

Investors & Patents...Don't you watch Dragon's Den?

Tell us your "idea" Jayjay23 and we'll let you know what we think.

A couple of things that I thought of before they existed in real life (to my knowledge) are:

Pay as you go parking by paying on your mobile phone instead of at a ticket machine so you can top up if you need more time. This idea came to me the very first time I parked in a car park I had to pay for. I had no change. Silly. There was a warden and I joked, "can I just text you an iou"? And the idea was born.

Apocalypse. That new Derren Brown thing. I thought of the idea for that when I was 22. (8 years ago) Wrote it down and everything. Yes pretty sad I know.

Plus other stuff. And loads of advertising ideas.

Can't believe no one has invented a touch screen cash machine yet.

Having worked in HM Patent Office some years ago, I would supoort BTID's comment about investors and patents. If its that good register it, then look for backing. One thing I remember during my time there, was the 'invention' of adding the extra bit on the front end of the Durex, around about 1966/7 if I remember right.

Right up my street this one. Before you think about going down the road of patenting an idea or talking to potential investors you need to do quite a bit of legwork yourself. I'd suggest you do the following in this order:

Check on the internet and at the patents offices (UK and US) what's out there already. Use a range of searches to see what's similar as well as looking if there's something identical. Similar ideas often have very broad patents that may exclude a new idea even if it's not exactly the same thing.

Work out what can actually be patented (concepts can't, but new uses for modified existing things can)

Go through the exercise of doing a business plan covering sourcing materials, manufacture, distribution, personnel, start up capital and other financial requirements, equipment, market research and cost everything. Even if you don't intend to do it yourself, you need to have a good handle on what's required, have the knowledge to take into any production or equity negotiations you may have to undertake and have a strong case for raising any investment required. If the idea needs testing, think about building a prototype or the real deal and testing the shit out of it.

You'd have to finance everything up to this point yourself, so the more checking you do, the less money you'll waste if for any of a number of reasons it doesn't work out.

If you're still convinced it's a goer at this stage, then start thinking about protecting it before you talk to Banks, VCs, Angels or potential partners e.g. manufacturers. Obviously you'll have to tell them something so it's a balancing act between protection and sharing.

Going through this process may lead you to modifying your original idea as a result of information you uncover along the way, so apply all the checks and tests to any variation of the original idea - objectively.

Patenting can take up to 4 years but you have some limited protection once you've registered. Still need to be careful who you share the idea with, but once you're going down that road you'll need to move quickly.

As a general principle, do as much research and development as you can without committing much in the way of finance before you have to. The other main thing is to try to be objective throughout. I've worked with many innovators who are so in love with their ideas that they can't (or don't want to) see the obvious flaws. Always a good idea to get as many trusted people as possible to play the devil's advocate.

Wander, sound advice. Add to that the possibility of using a Patent Agent, ( if you can afford it), because of all the legal loopholes, and don't forget the possiblility of getting your invention registered internationally.(used to be called Convention Documents). I remember seeing all sorts of things, the most surprising being the amount of new chemicals being registered. The Patent Office was co-located with the Trademarks office, and the Design office, although I'm going back some time, when it was in Southampton Buildings in Holborn.

wanderlust wrote:Right up my street this one. Before you think about going down the road of patenting an idea or talking to potential investors you need to do quite a bit of legwork yourself. I'd suggest you do the following in this order:

Check on the internet and at the patents offices (UK and US) what's out there already. Use a range of searches to see what's similar as well as looking if there's something identical. Similar ideas often have very broad patents that may exclude a new idea even if it's not exactly the same thing.

Work out what can actually be patented (concepts can't, but new uses for modified existing things can)

Go through the exercise of doing a business plan covering sourcing materials, manufacture, distribution, personnel, start up capital and other financial requirements, equipment, market research and cost everything. Even if you don't intend to do it yourself, you need to have a good handle on what's required, have the knowledge to take into any production or equity negotiations you may have to undertake and have a strong case for raising any investment required. If the idea needs testing, think about building a prototype or the real deal and testing the shit out of it.

You'd have to finance everything up to this point yourself, so the more checking you do, the less money you'll waste if for any of a number of reasons it doesn't work out.

If you're still convinced it's a goer at this stage, then start thinking about protecting it before you talk to Banks, VCs, Angels or potential partners e.g. manufacturers. Obviously you'll have to tell them something so it's a balancing act between protection and sharing.

Going through this process may lead you to modifying your original idea as a result of information you uncover along the way, so apply all the checks and tests to any variation of the original idea - objectively.

Patenting can take up to 4 years but you have some limited protection once you've registered. Still need to be careful who you share the idea with, but once you're going down that road you'll need to move quickly.

As a general principle, do as much research and development as you can without committing much in the way of finance before you have to. The other main thing is to try to be objective throughout. I've worked with many innovators who are so in love with their ideas that they can't (or don't want to) see the obvious flaws. Always a good idea to get as many trusted people as possible to play the devil's advocate.

All this sounds like super advice but what if you just have ideas but don't have the knowledge, funds or nous to do anything to make them take off. Surely I shouldn't jut wast them. Like the car park thing. I have now seen that car parks do this. I don't know when someone else started it off but I certainly didn't see it 8 years ago.

I know it's hard to imagine now but try to imagine this is the scenario. All tv channels are like the bbc. No adverts. All revenue is through licence and subscriptions directly. Nobody has even come up with the idea of advertising between programmes. (Yes it seems like an obvious idea to come up with but I am just saying what if nobody had thought of it. The idea just hadn't popped into anyones head yet).

One day I decide, "wow, I just had a great idea. Companies could pay tv channels to let them have 30 second slots to sell their products on tv between shows or during mini "breaks". I think, it's a pretty cool idea and I can see the potential in it but I have nowhere to go with it. I don't own a tv channel or an ad company. I can't go to the tv channels and say "listen I have this idea for you to make money" because they would just say, "good idea thanks for that" and I can't go to an ad agency and say "why don't you advertise on tv instead of newspapers" because they too would say "cool, thanks" and they would just go off and do it.

There must be a way to get ideas into the right hands at the concept stage.

Another example is. What if car insurance hadn't been thought of. And I just mean what if it had never occurred to anyone. Everyone who had a car just runs the risk of having a crash and getting sued if they cause it and paying out of their own pocket. But then one day someone thinks, "wouldn't it be a great idea if I could get all the drivers in the country to pay a monthly amount into a big pot so that if a person who has paid into the pot has a crash the pot will cover their costs. People who crash have to pay more next year. And so on. That way nobody will have to run the risk of paying out a large amount anymore. If the price is set at the right level the pot should cover all payouts but still have enough left to make a profit overall."

If that was my idea I would have nowhere to go with it. No prototype to build. No way to test it out. No way to get people or companies to join in the scheme. Approaching anyone with it who could do something useful with it would run the risk of giving them the idea and them running away with it. Get me?

What could I do then that would progress the idea but not at the same time give it away?

I think, but I'm not sure, that you cannot benefit from any ideas if you do not have the Intellectual Property Rights, i.e. if you tell someone and they use it, you have a battle on your hands to prove it was yours. This happened recently with the fight over the Reggae sause thing.

Have a look at this link, and it might help you on the way to your first million

http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/intellectual_property

jayjay23 wrote:A couple of things that I thought of before they existed in real life (to my knowledge) are:

Pay as you go parking by paying on your mobile phone instead of at a ticket machine so you can top up if you need more time. This idea came to me the very first time I parked in a car park I had to pay for. I had no change. Silly. There was a warden and I joked, "can I just text you an iou"? And the idea was born.

Apocalypse. That new Derren Brown thing. I thought of the idea for that when I was 22. (8 years ago) Wrote it down and everything. Yes pretty sad I know.

Plus other stuff. And loads of advertising ideas.

I'm out.

Michael Bolton wrote:

jayjay23 wrote:A couple of things that I thought of before they existed in real life (to my knowledge) are:

Pay as you go parking by paying on your mobile phone instead of at a ticket machine so you can top up if you need more time. This idea came to me the very first time I parked in a car park I had to pay for. I had no change. Silly. There was a warden and I joked, "can I just text you an iou"? And the idea was born.

Apocalypse. That new Derren Brown thing. I thought of the idea for that when I was 22. (8 years ago) Wrote it down and everything. Yes pretty sad I know.

Plus other stuff. And loads of advertising ideas.

I'm out.

LOL