It's the time of the year, when Mars is in Sagitarius and I just need to read some reader-mails. Remember, these are some real mails I have actually gotten from real people. Here we go:
Dear Nick of All Trades!
What can you tell me about being a successful inventor?
Yours truly:
Nick of All Trades
That is a very good question, Al, one I in fact know I am not qualified to answer. There are, however, some steps to follow that I personally find helpful:
1. Identify a problem. This one might be harder than it seems; most of the time people are unaware that they have a technical problem. Ocassionally it manifests as a crisis that is to be dealt with at the moment, or as a personal conflict. Think about it; thorough most of history man has been without the Internet, and nobody missed it. But one day someone had the insight to see; "Nobody shall need to go 50 minutes without watching a cat in a tux play the piano!" and thus the Internet was born. Could this just as well have happened during the French revolution? Or during Roman times? Of course it could, but nobody thought of it!
One way to accomplish this is to identify a necessity, a commodity or a convenience; go through the step-by-step process of how to acquire it and then figure out exactly what could go wrong at any one step.
Of course, that's the long, narrow way; many of the things that can be invented already have been invented. What you can do instead is to look at some of the current invention, and see what problems or inconveniences they cause. This doesn't actually make the old invention bad, it's just the natural way of progress. For example; food-poisoned by birthday candles!
If you still can't think of anything, just focus on some stock-problems as an exercise. Problems that are constantly being worked on, but never solved to satisfaction. Such as destroying your fellow man; perhaps the earliest and more prioritized problem in all of history.
2. Backwards induction. Inventing something is very much like putting a jigsaw puzzle together; every problem has a solution-shaped hole that is just waiting to be filled in. Try to imagine that you have already solved the problem. What would such a solution look like? What properties does it have? Then try and think back what step you would have taken in order to do that, and what step you would need to have done to do that. Eventually the path to your invention is clear.
For example: infants gets sick because the candles are made of wax, thus you need a candle the children won't get sick of even if they eat them. They don't, as a rule, get sick from marzipan, thus birthday candles made of marzipan are the solution!
It might be useful to review other inventions, see if their functions are applicable for what you are trying to accomplish. For example, flypaper can be used to trap flies. Can they also work on seagulls? Or baboons?
3. Figure out what's wrong with your invention. See, the reason people might not see a solution where you can might not be because they are too stupid. It might be because they are smart enough to realize the drawbacks of your device even before they even thought of it. For every ingenuity, there are tens of thousands of tiny adversaries that needs to be overcome, and at least one crisis. That's why it is important to critically review your ideas for any problems that might occur because of it. For example, I made a list of all the things that might prove fatal when designing my candles:
- Marzipan melts really, really fast
- Burned marzipan tastes like dank piss
- Warning: May encourage consuming the lit thread
And any one of these items might be the reason nobody else has thought of these types of candles before.
Don't be discouraged though! The more you know about your problem, the more you know about your finished product. Once you can't think of any more problems it's time for the worst part of the process:
4. Construction. See, this is the part which actually requires competence on your part. If you are anything like me and your digits are mostly there for show, then I suggest you ask someone else do this part.
5. Testing. Oh, you DEFINITELY don't want to be the one doing this one. Try and configure this step as some kind of innocent prank....
6. Marketing. Remember: you have not made a mouse-catcher before it is catching mice. You need to make the public aware of the problem, and the convenience of your invention. Try coming up with a catchcy slogan like this:
In the past, getting electrocuted in your sleep happened only in your worst nightmares... now it can be your wake-up call!See what I mean?
This has been your relatively arrest-free guide to making an invention. Please comment if you found my advice to be sound!
No comments:
Post a Comment