Business Metamorphosis LLC     BML Logo
In This Issue
Novel Inventive Features
Sizing Your Market
Disappearing Business
Quick Links
 
Join Our Mailing List

October 15 Seminar

 

The Rochester Professional Consultants Network [RPCN] Has invited us to speak at their fall meeting.  The topic will be "Expanding your Practice in New Areas" (when you cant do it all alone anymore). Watch this space for advance copies and trailers.
 
Technical Difficulties

 

Our New website had recently gone live. However we are now experiencing technical difficulties so its possible you may see the old site instead when you go  to www.bmllc.net       If you see the new site  tell us what you think.  We much appreciate your comments on improving our site to serve you better. 

 

 

Youtube Channel

 

 Checkout  the latest postings to our new YouTube Channel.  You can find videos on many of the topics covered in the newsletters.

 

 

 Newsletter Archive

To find back issues of the newsletter go to www.bmllc.net
 Newsletter - June  2014
 
  Please feel free to forward this newsletter to others who might be interested in our activities.   

Novel Inventive Features

Back in 2005  I wrote a Blog article on this topic.  Novel inventive features are a key concept for inventors because they are what  patent claims are written on and patent claims are the heart of a patent application and subsequent patent.

 

NIF's are those elements of an invention that distinguish it from those that have come before (the prior art). So for example if your invention is a widget and all widgets previously known have been red and you invent a green widget, that is one novel inventive feature of your invention.

 

I suggest to inventors that when they try to figure out what their NIF's are that they take a piece of paper and list all the features of their invention, not worrying about whether those features are novel or not.  Then go back over the list and delete those features that they are aware of as being part of other earlier inventions.  What's  left after this exercise are the Novel Inventive Features.

 

When we do a patent search we use the NIF's to find those patents that might block an inventors application because they are the same as what is being proposed for the invention.

 

Sometimes a NIF is not what an inventor thinks it is.  I once helped an inventor who thought he had invented the first smokeless ashtray.  Of course there were many who had got there before him.   But this inventor was selling his ashtray and outselling others.  I asked him why?  It turned out his filter was better than anyone else's.  Thus the NIF of his invention was the filter not the ashtray.

 

Another trick I recommend is to imaging your invention side by side with the closest competitor in a store and ask your self why anyone would buy your's instead of theirs.

 

I did this with a client who had invented a wasp spray at the end of a long pole for protection of the user from the wasps.  Unfortunately someone else had an invention that looked exactly the same, a spray can at the end of a long pole.

 

Doing the exercise I mentioned I asked him why anyone would buy his extended sprayer.  He said it would cost half as much as the competitor.  The features that allowed him to cut his price were the NIF's.

 

So look for the NIF's for your invention.  The more of them you find and the more unique they are the better your chance of getting your invention approved by the patent office and the stronger it will be.

 



  

To learn more please email  rblazey@businessmetamorphosis.com 

or  give us a call at  (585) 520-3539  

 

Sizing Your Market

ITTr Logo
When we ask people to fill in a ROTH scoring table one of the questions relates to market size.   Often clients have a grossly exaggerated concept of the size of their market.

They assert for example that they can sell their invention to everyone in the world (or at least their country) for the price that they are asking for it.   This is very seldom true.

To make an accurate estimate of market size you need to determine first the TAM (Total Addressable Market)  , then the SAM (segmented addressable market) and finally the Market Share you hope to achieve.  And in performing this last step you have to avoid the  dreaded "Chinese Toothbrush Fallacy".

The TAM is all those people or companies that might want to buy your product.  If you start lets say with an ordinary  Apple.  You could assert that everyone on the planet is a potential customer for your Apple.   But then as you do some research you might find countries where people don't eat apples.  That will then reduce the size of your TAM.   The SAM's are segments of the market.  They could be geographic or by channel , demographic or some other feature-

Again if the product is an Apple you can segment by  such elements geography and  age,  For example you will find that babies' are too young to eat whole apples and some Senior Citizens may not be able to eat them either.  So when you break your market down by age groups, and then count how many people there are in that group you will get an idea of how many potential customers you have left.

You may find eventually that your SAM  is people in the US and Europe between the ages of 5 and 75.

Once you have established your SAM's (there may be more than one)  its time to make some guesses on Market Share.  This is where you have to consider your competitors and avoid the "toothbrush falacy".  That fallacy is when  someone says there are 1.2 Billion Chinese and if I sell each of them a toothbrush costing a dollar, my market is 1.2 Billion.  Venture capitalists chuckle when they tell this story as an example of what not to say in your business plan.

Can you see what is wrong with this approach?   It assumes a number of things that are not known.  Ex: Do the Chinese use toothbrushes?  If so what Toothbrushes do they currently use [if they cost $.10@ your     plan is a looser out of the gate.  Also how will you tell the Chinese about your toothbrush(do you have access to a channel)-- Channels are something that is of paramount importance that engineer type inventors seldom think about.  A channel is the way you get your product to the customer.  It may be through brick and mortar stores, Internet sales, Direct sales force, telemarketing or whatever.  The time and cost of establishing a market channel can be substantial.
That is one reason that when we are looking for licensees for our clients inventions we often focus on companies that already have an established channel to the market the invention is intended to serve.



To find out more contact us at the address below or learn more from the website.

write to rblazey@ittrifecta.com or call (585) 520-3539

What to do when your Market Disappears?
 
OA Logo 
Opportunity Associates is a about giving you alternatives.   We know from long experience that companies cannot go on forever doing the same things in the same way (we call this   operating in the business comfort zone). 

 Eventually the world will change and your existing business methods and markets will become obsolete.  If you wait until that happens you are out of luck.  Fortunately these events rarely take place instantaneously.  Usually there is plenty of warning that what used to work so well no longer works quite so well.  There is a great temptation in the early stages of such changes to ignore them and keep doing things the same old way.  

As the change progresses we get attempts at belt tighening and other cost management approaches that don't get at the root of the problem but just delay the enevitable.  This is the time that many companies are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Finally the magnitude and significance of the change become impossible to avoid and that is when companies start seizing at straws, putting into effect solutions that might have worked if they had been thought through,  but now there is no time to do that and the death spiral simply increases .

Fortunately there is an alternative to this way of dealing with change.  In the words of the old boy scout motto its "Be Prepared".  That is what OA is about,  its about giving companies alternatives to draw upon.  Giving them lifeboats to get into when the ship starts sinking.

The methods of doing this are not rocket science but they do take discipline and commitment.   It takes time to sit down and generate new directions for the company, and it takes time to compare them against each other.   Its hard to find the commitment to do that from within the company especailly when things appear to be going relatively well.  That's when the forces supporting the existing order are strong in their assertion that resources addressed to new ventures are much better spent on changing the trade dress or other such activities that may bring in a few percent more revenue in the next quarter.

This is where OA can be most helpful to a company.  As an outside firm with not investment in the status quo we can help impartially evaluate the different ideas that we help to bring to the surface in the work-sessions that we conduct.

The full OA process is described in this video
OpportunityPortfolio_2008
OpportunityPortfolio_2008

If after seeing it you want to learn more please contact us.
 

You can email me at : rblazey@rochester.rr.com,  Call at (585) 520-3539.  Or visit our website by clicking on this link

 
We appreciate your responses to our newsletters.  Please send us your comments.  We are always interested in what you want to know.
 
Sincerely,
 

Richard Blazey
Business Metamorphosis LLC
Disclaimers 

 
Please realize that this newsletter contains only our opinions on patent matters.  We are not authorized to give legal advice.  If you are seeking such advice please contact an attorney.
 

 

Referrals Welcome 

We are never too busy for your referrals.  If you know someone who could benefit from any of our services, please introduce them to us by phone or by email.  It will be much appreciated.