Kind of like crowd sourcing idea’s like quirky.com? They are doing this already in many platforms on the web and you can make money if they idea goes to market. I was part of a new iPad workstation and carrying case and it was a ton of fun to get it to a product off of someone’s idea. We vote for the idea of the week then participate to make money on the product through pre-sales. If it hit threshold they make it and sell it. I am making $.49 cents per sale once it goes to market, so if you can actually get it to market, I would join you, if not join quirky.com and make money now!

Andrea, I looked at Quirky and need someone like you that has been through the process explain it a little more to me. From I read you pay $99 to get them to look over your product. Then people like yourself review and vote on it. If it gets enough votes they do more detailed renderings and you now have to get enough people saying they want it (pre-sell) or basically get enough orders in to make it profitable for them to make the product. Then once they get enough pre-orders they make the product and fill the orders.

One thing I don’t see is any mention of patent protection before the community sees it. Also, there is no limit to how many people can jump in and contribute to an idea. You can dilute any percentage to next to nothing if enough people jump in. The site FAQ says
“30% of all top line revenue brought in by each product by sales made directly on our site, as well as 10% of indirect retail sales gets distributed to a product’s influencers….Around 40% of the above reward goes to the ideator him/herself.
There is no cap on the number of influencers.”

You mention “I am making $.49 cents per sale once it goes to market” So, does that mean it has enough pre-sales already and they are making the product or are you still at the getting enough pre-sale stage?

Thanks

http://www.rogerbrown.net

Cody, I think someone (maybe the Colonel) started a similar forum a while back and it unfortunately got really vicious. Something like this was going on in the Inventors Lounge last Oct/Nov. when I broke my nose: lots of free-thinking about a new design for eyeglasses – great fun. Currently, a ‘team’ has been having fun with an inventor’s idea (Clear Signal Panty…..) and all sorts of ideas were flying around: some just funny and many workable and then someone tried to spoil it by getting vicious.

With this particular group, there may be too many huge egos to keep your idea in check but good luck. We probably couldn’t be successful inventors without big egos but knowing how to separate constructive criticism from a personal attack is a difficult task. I have been a member of several think tanks (mostly for presentation of conventions and golf tournaments) but the teams were comprised of people with pretty tough skin.

Andrea, thanks for sharing.

The downside with Quirky from an IP perspective is that you probably won’t be able to get a foreign patent because you have essentially released the possible product to the public without any IP protection. A U.S. patent is possible as long as it is filed within 12 months of the disclosure. If folks file a PPA before posting their product idea on Quirky would however preserve the ability to file a foreign patent. That assumes that the final product that gets developed still fits your PPA.