3 Creativity, Innovations, and Invention

This section is adapted from:
“Entrepreneurship: Introduction” by Laverty, Lavell, et al. is licensed CC BY 4.0

Chapter Outline

4.1 Tools for Creativity and Innovation
4.2 Creativity, Innovation, and Invention: How They Differ
4.3 Developing Ideas, Innovations, and Inventions

We enter the world as curious beings. However, as we grow up, we are told to color inside the lines and that real animals can’t talk—direction that can squelch creativity. Many successful entrepreneurs work to unlearn some of those messages in order to tap into creative thinking. What do you do when you are given a task that requires you to be creative? Do you get out your art supplies and start drawing? Do you pull out your phone or get on your computer and head straight for a search engine? Steve Jobs, the Apple founder and well-known innovator, had a preference when it came to creative contemplation, and it had nothing to do with art supplies or smartphones. Jobs did some of his best creative thinking when he went on a walk, or a walking chat.

Why did Jobs prefer walking as a way to develop new ideas? A Stanford University study found that walking improves creative thinking.1 When you launch an entrepreneurial journey and set out to innovate and create, or when you hit a sticking point that requires a creative solution, it may be time to take a walk. Better yet, if you can find a friend, walk and talk. It might energize your creativity and lead to innovation and, possibly, to invention.

OBJECTIVES

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

  • Describe popular, well-supported, creative problem-solving methods
  • Understand which innovation or problem-solving methods apply best in different settings
  • Know where to look for emerging innovation practices, research, and tools

Creativity, innovation, and invention are key concepts for your entrepreneurial journey. Fostering creativity and innovation will add essential tools to your entrepreneurial toolkit. In this chapter, first you’ll learn about a few practical tools that can assist you in your efforts to create and innovate. Then, we’ll define and distinguish creativity, innovation, and invention, and note the differences between pioneering and incremental innovation. Finally, we’ll cover models and processes for developing creativity, innovation, and inventiveness. The science, study, and practice of creativity and design thinking are constantly evolving. Staying on top of well-documented, successful approaches can give you a competitive advantage and may remind you that entrepreneurship can be fun, exciting, and refreshing, as long as you keep your creative spirit alive and in constant motion.

Creative Problem-Solving Methods

Creative thinking can take various forms (Figure 4.2). This section focuses on a few creative thinking exercises that have proven useful for entrepreneurs. After discussing ideation practices that you can try, we conclude with a discussion of an in-depth innovation exercise that can help you develop a habit of turning creative ideas into innovative products and services. In this section, outcomes are vital.

Two people walking down a sidewalk together.
Figure 4.2 When your process hits a sticking point, a walk—or a walk and talk—can help boost your creativity in thinking through solutions. (credit: “beard business city colleague” by “rawpixel”/Pixabay, CC0)

Three ideation practices are discussed here. Several others are offered in links at the end of this section. The first ideation practice comes from Stanford’s Design School.2 The objective is to generate as many ideas as possible and start to develop some of those ideas. This practice is the quintessential design thinking practice, or human-centric design thinking exercise, and it consists of five parts: accessing and expressing empathy, defining the problem, ideating solutions (brainstorming), prototyping, and testing (Figure 4.3). Empathy is the human ability to feel what other humans are feeling, which in the context of creativity, innovation, and invention is essential to beginning a process of human-centric design. Practicing empathy enables us to relate to people and see the problem through the eyes and feelings of those who experience it. By expressing empathy, you can begin to understand many facets of a problem and start to think about all of the forces you will need to bring to bear on it. From empathy comes the ability to proceed to the second step, defining the problem. Defining the problem must be based on honest, rational, and emotional observation for human-centric design to work. Third in the process is brainstorming solutions. The other two ideation exercises or practices in this section delve more deeply into brainstorming (also discussed in Problem Solving and Need Recognition Techniques), what it means, and how you can brainstorm creatively beyond the basic whiteboard scribbling in almost every organization. Designing for other people means building a prototype—the fourth step—and to test it. Once you apply this process to developing a product or service, you need to return to the empathetic mindset to examine whether you have reached a viable solution and, thus, an opportunity.

Human-centric design consists of empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test.
Figure 4.3 The empathetic design cycle is human-centric. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)

To delve more deeply into ideation as a practice, we introduce here the Six Thinking Hats method (Figure 4.4).3 There are different versions of this ideation game, but all of them are quite useful for encouraging thought by limiting the mindset of those involved in the game. Being encouraged to embody one mode of thinking frees you from considering other aspects of a problem that can limit creativity when you are looking for a solution. The six hats are:

  • White Hat: acts as information gatherer by conducting research and bringing quantitative analysis to the discussion; sticks to the facts
  • Red Hat: brings raw emotion to the mix and offers sensibilities without having to justify them
  • Black Hat: employs logic and caution; warns participants about institutional limitations; also known as the “devil’s advocate”
  • Yellow Hat: brings the “logical positive” of optimism to the group; encourages solving small and large problems
  • Green Hat: thinks creatively; introduces change and provokes other members when needed; new ideas are the purview of the Green Hat
  • Blue Hat: maintains the broader structure of the discussion and may set the terms by which progress will be judged; makes sure the other hats play by the rules, or stay in their respective lanes, so to speak
Cartoon of figures wearing different colored hats: White is research, red is emotions, black is logic, yellow is encouragement, green is creativity, and blue is enforcement.
Figure 4.4 The Six Thinking Hats exercise is designed to have each participant focus on a particular approach to the problem or discussion. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)

You can apply the Six Thinking Hats exercise to force structure on a discussion where, without it, several members of the group might try to wear several hats each. This game is not always easy to implement. If members cannot follow the rules, the process breaks down. When it works best, the Blue Hat maintains control and keeps the practice moving quickly. What you and your group should experience is a peculiar freedom arising from the imposition of limitations. By being responsible for only one mode of thinking, each participant can fully advocate for that point of view and can think deeply about that particular aspect of the solution. Thus, the group can be deeply creative, deeply logical, deeply optimistic, and deeply critical. This practice is meant to move entire groups past surface-level solutions. If you practice this exercise well, the challenges of implementing it are well worth the effort. It gives you the opportunity to vet ideas thoroughly while keeping many personality clashes at bay. If the participants stay in character, they can be accused only of acting in the best interests of their hat.

Your instructor may have your group members try different hats in different ideation exercises so you all can more fully develop each mindset.4 This exercise forces you out of your most comfortable modes of thinking. You and your classmates can recognize in each other skills that you may not have realized you possess.

The third ideation practice is quite simple. If stagnant thinking has begun to dominate an ongoing discussion, it can be helpful to inject an ideation framework. This is the “statement starters” method.5 Ask, “How might we ________?” or “What if we ________?” in order to open up new possibilities when you seem to have reached the limits of creativity. This method is more than simply asking “Why not?” because it seeks to uncover how a problem might be solved. For entrepreneurs, the simplest form of framing a problem in the form of a question can be eye opening. It assumes open possibilities, invites participation, and demands focus. Statement starters assume that, at least, there might be a solution to every problem. Ideation is about starting down new paths. This mode of thought applies to social problems as well as consumer pain points (discussed later). Creating a list of statement starters can help entrepreneurs examine different possibilities by simply adopting different points of view when asking questions. For example, the question, “How might we keep rivers clean?” is similar to the question, “How might we prevent animal waste runoff from entering our city’s waterways?” but the implications of each question are different for different stakeholders. Recall that stakeholders are individuals who have a vital interest in the business or organization. Statement starters almost always lead to a discussion of stakeholders and how they might be involved in finding solutions, offering support, and perhaps one day purchasing or contributing to dynamic, disruptive inventions or changes in social practice.

Footnotes

  • 2Stanford d.school. https://dschool.stanford.edu/
  • 3“10 Creative Techniques for You and Your Team.” MiroBlog. n.d. https://miro.com/blog/creative-techniques/
  • 4“Six Thinking Hats.” The de Bono Group. n.d. http://www.debonogroup.com/six_thinking_hats.php
  • 5Michelle Ferrier. “Ideation.” Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship. n.d. https://press.rebus.community/media-innovation-and-entrepreneurship/chapter/ideation-2/

 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

  • Distinguish between creativity, innovation, and invention
  • Explain the difference between pioneering and incremental innovation, and which processes are best suited to each

One of the key requirements for entrepreneurial success is your ability to develop and offer something unique to the marketplace. Over time, entrepreneurship has become associated with creativity, the ability to develop something original, particularly an idea or a representation of an idea. Innovation requires creativity, but innovation is more specifically the application of creativity. Innovation is the manifestation of creativity into a usable product or service. In the entrepreneurial context, innovation is any new idea, process, or product, or a change to an existing product or process that adds value to that existing product or service.

How is an invention different from an innovation? All inventions contain innovations, but not every innovation rises to the level of a unique invention. For our purposes, an invention is a truly novel product, service, or process. It will be based on previous ideas and products, but it is such a leap that it is not considered an addition to or a variant of an existing product but something unique. Table 4.2 highlights the differences between these three concepts.

Creativity, Innovation, and Invention
Concept Description
Creativity ability to develop something original, particularly an idea or a representation of an idea, with an element of aesthetic flair
Innovation change that adds value to an existing product or service
Invention truly novel product, service, or process that, though based on ideas and products that have come before, represents a leap, a creation truly novel and different
Table4.2

One way we can consider these three concepts is to relate them to design thinking. Design thinking is a method to focus the design and development decisions of a product on the needs of the customer, typically involving an empathy-driven process to define complex problems and create solutions that address those problems. Complexity is key to design thinking. Straightforward problems that can be solved with enough money and force do not require much design thinking. Creative design thinking and planning are about finding new solutions for problems with several tricky variables in play. Designing products for human beings, who are complex and sometimes unpredictable, requires design thinking.

Airbnb has become a widely used service all over the world. That has not always been the case, however. In 2009, the company was near failure. The founders were struggling to find a reason for the lack of interest in their properties until they realized that their listings needed professional, high-quality photographs rather than simple cell-phone photos. Using a design thinking approach, the founders traveled to the properties with a rented camera to take some new photographs. As a result of this experiment, weekly revenue doubled. This approach could not be sustainable in the long term, but it generated the outcome the founders needed to better understand the problem. This creative approach to solving a complex problem proved to be a major turning point for the company.8

People who are adept at design thinking are creative, innovative, and inventive as they strive to tackle different types of problems. Consider Divya Nag, a millennial biotech and medical device innovation leader, who launched a business after she discovered a creative way to prolong the life of human cells in Petri dishes. Nag’s stem-cell research background and her entrepreneurial experience with her medical investment firm made her a popular choice when Apple hired her to run two programs dedicated to developing health-related apps, a position she reached before turning twenty-four years old.9

Creativity, innovation, inventiveness, and entrepreneurship can be tightly linked. It is possible for one person to model all these traits to some degree. Additionally, you can develop your creativity skills, sense of innovation, and inventiveness in a variety of ways. In this section, we’ll discuss each of the key terms and how they relate to the entrepreneurial spirit.

Creativity

Entrepreneurial creativity and artistic creativity are not so different. You can find inspiration in your favorite books, songs, and paintings, and you also can take inspiration from existing products and services. You can find creative inspiration in nature, in conversations with other creative minds, and through formal ideation exercises, for example, brainstorming. Ideation is the purposeful process of opening up your mind to new trains of thought that branch out in all directions from a stated purpose or problem. Brainstorming, the generation of ideas in an environment free of judgment or dissension with the goal of creating solutions, is just one of dozens of methods for coming up with new ideas.10

You can benefit from setting aside time for ideation. Reserving time to let your mind roam freely as you think about an issue or problem from multiple directions is a necessary component of the process. Ideation takes time and a deliberate effort to move beyond your habitual thought patterns. If you consciously set aside time for creativity, you will broaden your mental horizons and allow yourself to change and grow.11

Entrepreneurs work with two types of thinking. Linear thinking—sometimes called vertical thinking—involves a logical, step-by-step process. In contrast, creative thinking is more often lateral thinking, free and open thinking in which established patterns of logical thought are purposefully ignored or even challenged. You can ignore logic; anything becomes possible. Linear thinking is crucial in turning your idea into a business. Lateral thinking will allow you to use your creativity to solve problems that arise. Figure 4.5 summarizes linear and lateral thinking.

Linear thinking involves the use of logic, a step-by-step approach, and vertical flow down a planned path for innovation. Lateral thinking is creative thinking that is open to possibilities and uses agility in problem solving to consider better alternatives or solutions.
Figure 4.5 Entrepreneurs can be most effective if they use both linear and lateral thinking. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)

It is certainly possible for you to be an entrepreneur and focus on linear thinking. Many viable business ventures flow logically and directly from existing products and services. However, for various reasons, creativity and lateral thinking are emphasized in many contemporary contexts in the study of entrepreneurship. Some reasons for this are increased global competition, the speed of technological change, and the complexity of trade and communication systems.12 These factors help explain not just why creativity is emphasized in entrepreneurial circles but also why creativity should be emphasized. Product developers of the twenty-first century are expected to do more than simply push products and innovations a step further down a planned path. Newer generations of entrepreneurs are expected to be path breakers in new products, services, and processes.

Examples of creativity are all around us. They come in the forms of fine art and writing, or in graffiti and viral videos, or in new products, services, ideas, and processes. In practice, creativity is incredibly broad. It is all around us whenever or wherever people strive to solve a problem, large or small, practical or impractical.

Innovation

We previously defined innovation as a change that adds value to an existing product or service. According to the management thinker and author Peter Drucker, the key point about innovation is that it is a response to both changes within markets and changes from outside markets. For Drucker, classical entrepreneurship psychology highlights the purposeful nature of innovation.13 Business firms and other organizations can plan to innovate by applying either lateral or linear thinking methods, or both. In other words, not all innovation is purely creative. If a firm wishes to innovate a current product, what will likely matter more to that firm is the success of the innovation rather than the level of creativity involved. Drucker summarized the sources of innovation into seven categories, as outlined in Table 4.3. Firms and individuals can innovate by seeking out and developing changes within markets or by focusing on and cultivating creativity. Firms and individuals should be on the lookout for opportunities to innovate.14

Drucker’s Seven Sources of Innovation15
Source Description
The unexpected Looking for new opportunities in the market; unexpected product performance; unexpected new products as examples
The incongruity Discrepancies between what you think should be and what is reality
Process need Weaknesses in the organization, product, or service
Changes in industry/market New regulations; new technologies
Demographics Understanding needs and wants of target markets
Changes in perceptions Changes in perceptions of life events and values
New knowledge New technologies; advancements in thinking; new research
Table4.3

One innovation that demonstrates several of Drucker’s sources is the use of cashier kiosks in fast-food restaurants. McDonald’s was one of the first to launch these self-serve kiosks. Historically, the company has focused on operational efficiencies (doing more/better with less). In response to changes in the market, changes in demographics, and process need, McDonald’s incorporated self-serve cashier stations into their stores. These kiosks address the need of younger generations to interact more with technology and gives customers faster service in most cases.16

Another leading expert on innovation, Tony Ulwick, focuses on understanding how the customer will judge or evaluate the quality and value of the product. The product development process should be based on the metrics that customers use to judge products, so that innovation can address those metrics and develop the best product for meeting customers’ needs when it hits the market. This process is very similar to Drucker’s contention that innovation comes as a response to changes within and outside of the market. Ulwick insists that focusing on the customer should begin early in the development process.17

Disruptive innovation is a process that significantly affects the market by making a product or service more affordable and/or accessible, so that it will be available to a much larger audience. Clay Christensen of Harvard University coined this term in the 1990s to emphasize the process nature of innovation. For Christensen, the innovative component is not the actual product or service, but the process that makes that product more available to a larger population of users. He has since published a good deal on the topic of disruptive innovation, focusing on small players in a market. Christensen theorizes that a disruptive innovation from a smaller company can threaten an existing larger business by offering the market new and improved solutions. The smaller company causes the disruption when it captures some of the market share from the larger organization.18,19 One example of a disruptive innovation is Uber and its impact on the taxicab industry. Uber’s innovative service, which targets customers who might otherwise take a cab, has shaped the industry as whole by offering an alternative that some deem superior to the typical cab ride.

One key to innovation within a given market space is to look for pain points, particularly in existing products that fail to work as well as users expect them to. A pain point is a problem that people have with a product or service that might be addressed by creating a modified version that solves the problem more efficiently.20 For example, you might be interested in whether a local retail store carries a specific item without actually going there to check. Most retailers now have a feature on their websites that allows you to determine whether the product (and often how many units) is available at a specific store. This eliminates the need to go to the location only to find that they are out of your favorite product. Once a pain point is identified in a firm’s own product or in a competitor’s product, the firm can bring creativity to bear in finding and testing solutions that sidestep or eliminate the pain, making the innovation marketable. This is one example of an incremental innovation, an innovation that modifies an existing product or service.21

In contrast, a pioneering innovation is one based on a new technology, a new advancement in the field, and/or an advancement in a related field that leads to the development of a new product.22 Firms offering similar products and services can undertake pioneering innovations, but pioneering the new product requires opening up new market space and taking major risks.

ENTREPRENEUR IN ACTION

Pioneering Innovation in the Personal Care Industry

In his ninth-grade biology class, Benjamin Stern came up with an idea to change the personal care industry. He envisioned personal cleaning products (soap, shampoo, etc.) that would contain no harsh chemicals or sulfates, and would also produce no plastic waste from empty bottles. He developed Nohbo Drops, single-use personal cleansing products with water-soluble packaging. Stern was able to borrow money from family and friends, and use some of his college fund to hire a chemist to develop the product. He then appeared on Shark Tank with his innovation in 2016 and secured the backing of investor Mark Cuban. Stern assembled a research team to perfect the product and obtained a patent (Figure 4.6). The products are now available via the company website.

Patent for Hygiene Product Tablet and Methods of Formulating Same by applicant Nohbo, LLC, invented by Benjamin Stern and Robert Ray.
Figure 4.6 This is part of the patent application for Nohbo drops. (credit: modification of “US Patent US20170014313A1” by Nohbo LLC/Google Patents, Public Domain)

Is a pioneering innovation an invention? A firm makes a pioneering innovation when it creates a product or service arising from what it has done before. Pokémon GO is a great example of pioneering innovation. Nintendo was struggling to keep pace with other gaming-related companies. The company, in keeping with its core business of video games, came up with a new direction for the gaming industry. Pokémon GO is known worldwide and is one of the most successful mobile games launched.23 It takes creativity to explore a new direction, but not every pioneering innovation creates a distinctly new product or capability for consumers and clients.

Entrepreneurs in the process of developing an innovation usually examine the current products and services their firm offers, investigate new technologies and techniques being introduced in the marketplace or in related marketplaces, watch research and development in universities and in other companies, and pursue new developments that are likely to fit one of two conditions: an innovation that likely fits an existing market better than other products or services being offered; or an innovation that fits a market that so far has been underserved.

An example of an incremental innovation is the trash receptacle you find at fast-food restaurants. For many years, trash cans in fast-food locations were placed in boxes behind swinging doors. The trash cans did one job well: They hid the garbage from sight. But they created other problems: Often, the swinging doors would get ketchup and other waste on them, surely a pain point. Newer trash receptacles in fast-food restaurants have open fronts or open tops that enable people to dispose of their trash more neatly. The downside for restaurants is that users can see and possibly smell the food waste, but if the restaurants change the trash bags frequently, as is a good practice anyway, this innovation works relatively well. You might not think twice about this everyday example of an innovation when you eat at a fast-food restaurant, but even small improvements can matter a lot, particularly if the market they serve is vast.

Invention

An invention is a leap in capability beyond innovation. Some inventions combine several innovations into something new. Invention certainly requires creativity, but it goes beyond coming up with new ideas, combinations of thought, or variations on a theme. Inventors build. Developing something users and customers view as an invention could be important to some entrepreneurs, because when a new product or service is viewed as unique, it can create new markets. True inventiveness is often recognized in the marketplace, and it can help build a valuable reputation and help establish market position if the company can build a future-oriented corporate narrative around the invention.24

Besides establishing a new market position, a true invention can have a social and cultural impact. At the social level, a new invention can influence the ways institutions work. For example, the invention of desktop computing put accounting and word processing into the hands of nearly every office worker. The ripple effects spread to the school systems that educate and train the corporate workforce. Not long after the spread of desktop computing, workers were expected to draft reports, run financial projections, and make appealing presentations. Specializations or aspects of specialized jobs—such as typist, bookkeeper, corporate copywriter—became necessary for almost everyone headed for corporate work. Colleges and eventually high schools saw software training as essential for students of almost all skill levels. These additional capabilities added profitability and efficiencies, but they also have increased job requirements for the average professional.

Some of the most successful inventions contain a mix of familiarity and innovation that is difficult to achieve. With this mix, the rate of adoption can be accelerated because of the familiarity with the concept or certain aspects of the product or service. As an example, the “videophone” was a concept that began to be explored as early as the late 1800s. AT&T began extensive work on videophones during the 1920s. However, the invention was not adopted because of a lack of familiarity with the idea of seeing someone on a screen and communicating back and forth. Other factors included societal norms, size of the machine, and cost. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that the invention started to take hold in the marketplace.25 The concept of a black box is that activities are performed in a somewhat mysterious and ambiguous manner, with a serendipitous set of actions connecting that result in a surprisingly beneficial manner. An example is Febreeze, a chemical combination that binds molecules to eliminate odors. From a black box perspective, the chemical engineers did not intend to create this product, but as they were working on creating another product, someone noticed that the product they were working on removed odors, thus inadvertently creating a successful new product marketed as Febreeze.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Did Henry Ford Invent the Assembly Line?

Very few products or procedures are actually brand-new ideas. Most new products are alterations or new applications of existing products, with some type of twist in design, function, portability, or use. Henry Ford is usually credited with inventing the moving assembly line Figure 4.7(a) in 1913. However, some 800 years before Henry Ford, wooden ships were mass produced in the northern Italian city of Venice in a system that anticipated the modern assembly line.

Various components (ropes, sails, and so on) were prefabricated in different parts of the Venetian Arsenal, a huge, complex construction site along one of Venice’s canals. The parts were then delivered to specific assembly points Figure 4.7(b). After each stage of construction, the ships were floated down the canal to the next assembly area, where the next sets of workers and parts were waiting. Moving the ships down the waterway and assembling them in stages increased speed and efficiency to the point that long before the Industrial Revolution, the Arsenal could produce one fully functional and completely equipped ship per day. The system was so successful that it was used from the thirteenth century to about 1800.

Henry Ford did not invent anything new—he only applied the 800-year-old process of building wooden ships by hand along a moving waterway to making metal cars by hand on a moving conveyor (Figure 4.7).

(a) Photo of workers on an assembly line. (b) Photo of the Venetian Arsenal.
Figure 4.7 (a) Workers assemble car parts on an early Ford factory assembly line. (b) The Venetian Arsenal was an early “assembly line” where workers could build a complete ship in a single day. (credit (a): modification of “Ford assembly line – 1913” by “Hohum”/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain; credit (b): modification of “venice-arsenal-italy” by “irenetriches1”/Pixabay, CC0)

Opportunities to bring new products and processes to market are in front of us every day. The key is having the ability to recognize them and implement them. Likewise, the people you need to help you be successful may be right in front of you on a regular basis. The key is having the ability to recognize who they are and making connections to them. Just as those ships and cars moved down an assembly line until they were ready to be put into service, start thinking about moving down the “who I know” line so that you will eventually have a successful business in place.

WORK IT OUT

Razors

The safety razor was an innovation over the straight razor. Safety razor blades are small enough to fit inside a capsule, and the location and type of handle was altered to suit the new orientation of handle to blade (Figure 4.10). Most contemporary razors are themselves innovations on the safety razor, whether they have two, three, four, or more blades. The method of changing razor blades has evolved with each innovation on the safety razor, but the designs are functionally similar.

The electric razor is a related invention. It still uses blades to shave hair off the face or body, but the blades are hidden beneath a foil or foils. Hairs poke through the foils when the razor is pressed against the skin, and blades moving in various directions cut the hairs. Although electric razors use blades as do mechanical razors, the new design and the added technology qualified the electric razor as an invention that offered something new in the shaving industry when Jacob Schick won the patent for a shaving machine in 1930.34 Still other innovations in the shaving genre include gender-specific razors, beard trimmers, and, more recently, online clubs such as Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s Shave Club.

(a) Photo of someone being shaved with a straight razor. (b) Photo of two different safety razors. (c) Photo of an electric razor.
Figure 4.10 (a) The straight razor is still in use, but there are newer innovations that are more popular. (b) The safety razor is an innovation over the straight razor. (c) The electric razor is an innovation related to the safety razor. (credit (a): modification of “barber-beard-razor-shaving” by “jackmac34”/Pixabay, CC0; credit (b): modification of “Safety Razor vs Cartridge Razor” by “Tools of Men”/Creative Commons, CC BY 2.0; credit (c): modification of “Philips 8290 shaver unboxing” by “renaissancechambara”/Creative Commons, CC BY 2.0)

Think about the conceptual difference between innovation and invention. Is the safety razor a pioneering innovation or an incremental one? What makes the electric razor an invention, as we define it here? What makes it stand out as a leap from previous types of razors? Do you think the electric razor is a “sure thing”? Why or why not? Consider the availability of electricity at the time the first electric razors were being made. Why do you think the electric razor made it over the diffusion chasm between early adopters and early majority adopters? Do you think the electric razor was invented iteratively with small changes to the same product in response to customer preferences? Or did it develop in a series of black box inventions, with each one either diffusing or not?

Footnotes

  • 8“How Design Thinking Transformed Airbnb from Failing Startup to Billion Dollar Business.” First Round Review. n.d. https://firstround.com/review/How-design-thinking-transformed-Airbnb-from-failing-startup-to-billion-dollar-business/
  • 9“Divya Nag, 26.” Fortune. n.d. http://fortune.com/40-under-40/2017/divya-nag-27/
  • 10Rikke Dam and Teo Siang. “Introduction to the Essential Ideation Techniques Which Are the Heart of Design Thinking.” Interaction Design Foundation. April 2019. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/introduction-to-the-essential-ideation-techniques-which-are-the-heart-of-design-thinking
  • 11Dawn Kelly and Terry L. Amburgey. “Organizational Inertia and Momentum: A Dynamic Model of Strategic Change.” Academy of Management Journal 34, no. 3 (1991): 591–612.
  • 12Ian Fillis and Ruth Rentschler. “The Role of Creativity in Entrepreneurship.” Journal of Enterprising Culture 18, no. 1 (2010): 49–81.
  • 13P. F. Drucker. Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practices and Principles. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1986.
  • 14P. F. Drucker. Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practices and Principles. (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1986), 35.
  • 15P. F. Drucker. Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practices and Principles. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1986.
  • 16Blake Morgan. “5 Fresh Examples of Customer Service Innovation.” Forbes. July 17, 2017. https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2017/07/17/5-fresh-examples-of-customer-experience-innovation/#3ae5a46e5c18
  • 17Tony Ulwick. “Reinventing Innovation for 25 Years.” Strategyn. n.d. https://strategyn.com/tony-ulwick/?network=g&matchtype=p&keyword=tony%20ulwick&creative=268244402567&device=c&devicemodel=&placement=&position=1t1&campaignid=1394486829&adgroupid=57939305027&loc_physical_ms=9015694&loc_interest_ms=&gclid=CjwKCAjw29vsBRAuEiwA9s-0B2jD3BYbm-BEiPWHKfd6R6mnW4XCHuhXbX_JhUof76IdXh6joIzlWRoCqJAQAvD_BwE
  • 18Chris Larson. “Disruptive Innovation Theory: What It Is & 4 Key Concepts.” Harvard Business School. November 15, 2016. https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/4-keys-to-understanding-clayton-christensens-theory-of-disruptive-innovation
  • 19Rosamond Hutt. “What Is Disruptive Innovation?” World Economic Forum. June 25, 2016. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/06/what-is-disruptive-innovation/
  • 20Lloyd Waldo. “What’s a Pain Point? A Guide for Startups.” StartupYard Seed Accelerator. December 1, 2016. https://startupyard.com/whats-pain-point/
  • 21Abdul Ali, Manohar U. Kalwani, and Dan Kovenock. “Selecting Product Development Projects: Pioneering versus Incremental Innovation Strategies.” Management Science 39, no. 3 (1993): 255–274.
  • 22Abdul Ali. “Pioneering versus Incremental Innovation: Review and Research Propositions.” Journal of Product Innovation Management 11, no. 1 (1994): 46–61.
  • 23JV Chamary. “Why ‘Pokémon GO’ Is the World’s Most Important Game.” Forbes. February 10, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2018/02/10/pokemon-go-science-health-benefits/#2b6f07fd3ab0
  • 24Morten Thanning Vendelø. “Narrating Corporate Reputation: Becoming Legitimate through Storytelling.” International Studies of Management & Organization 28, no. 3 (1998): 120–137.
  • 25Thomas J. Fitzgerald. “For the Deaf: Communication without the Wait.” The New York Times. December 18, 2003. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/technology/for-the-deaf-communication-without-the-wait.html
  • 34“Jacob Schick Invents the Electric Razor.” Connecticut History. May 13, 2017. https://connecticuthistory.org/jacob-schick-invents-the-electric-razor/

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

  • Describe and apply the five stages of creativity
  • Discuss innovation as a system for problem solving and much more
  • Outline the sequence of steps in developing an invention

The previous section defined creativity, innovation, and invention, and provided examples. You might think of creativity as raw; innovation as transforming creativity into a functional purpose, often meant to eradicate a pain point or to fulfill a need; and invention as a creation that leaves a lasting impact. In this section, you will learn about processes designed to help you apply knowledge from the previous section.

The Creative Process: The Five Stages of Creativity

Raw creativity and an affinity for lateral thinking may be innate, but creative people must refine these skills in order to become masters in their respective fields. They practice in order to apply their skills readily and consistently, and to integrate them with other thought processes and emotions. Anyone can improve in creative efforts with practice. For our purposes, practice is a model for applied creativity that is derived from an entrepreneurial approach (Figure 4.11).35 It requires:

  1. Preparation
  2. Incubation
  3. Insight
  4. Evaluation
  5. Elaboration
The five stages of creativity are preparation, incubation, insight, evaluation, and elaboration.
Figure 4.11 These are the five stages of creativity, according to Graham Wallas in The Art of Thought.36 (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)

Preparation

Preparation involves investigating a chosen field of interest, opening your mind, and becoming immersed in materials, mindset, and meaning. If you have ever tried to produce something creative without first absorbing relevant information and observing skilled practitioners at work, then you understand how difficult it is. This base of knowledge and experience mixed with an ability to integrate new thoughts and practices can help you sift through the ideas quicker. However, relying too heavily on prior knowledge can restrict the creative process. When you immerse yourself in a creative practice, you make use of the products or the materials of others’ creativity. For example, a video-game designer plays different types of video games on different consoles, computers, and online in networks. She or he may play alone, with friends in collaboration, or in competition. Consuming the products in a field gives you a sense of what is possible and indicates boundaries that you may attempt to push with your own creative work. Preparation broadens your mind and lets you study the products, practice, and culture in a field. It is also a time for goal setting. Whether your chosen field is directly related to art and design, such as publishing, or involves human-centric design, which includes all sorts of software and product design efforts, you need a period of open-minded reception to ideas. Repetitive practice is also part of the preparation stage, so that you can understand the current field of production and become aware of best practices, whether or not you are currently capable of matching them. During the preparation stage, you can begin to see how other creative people put meaning into their products, and you can establish benchmarks against which to measure your own creative work.

Incubation

Incubation refers to giving yourself, and your subconscious mind in particular, time to incorporate what you learned and practiced in the preparation stage. Incubation involves the absence of practice. It may look to an outsider as though you are at rest, but your mind is at work. A change of environment is key to incubating ideas.37 A new environment allows you to receive stimuli other than those directly associated with the creative problem you are working on. It could be as simple as taking a walk or going to a new coffee shop to allow your mind to wander and take in the information you gathered in the previous stage. Mozart stated, “When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer—say, traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly.”38 Incubation allows your mind to integrate your creative problem with your stored memories and with other thoughts or emotions you might have. This simply is not possible to do when you are consciously fixated on the creative problem and related tasks and practice.

Incubation can take a short or a long time, and you can perform other activities while allowing this process to take place. One theory about incubation is that it takes language out of the thought process. If you are not working to apply words to your creative problems and interests, you can free your mind to make associations that go deeper, so to speak, than language.39 Patiently waiting for incubation to work is quite difficult. Many creative and innovative people develop hobbies involving physical activity to keep their minds busy while they allow ideas to incubate.

Insight

Insight or “illumination” is a term for the “aha!” moment—when the solution to a creative problem suddenly becomes readily accessible to your conscious mind. The “aha!” moment has been observed in literature, in history, and in cognitive studies of creativity.40 Insights may come all at once or in increments. They are not easily understood because, by their very nature, they are difficult to isolate in research and experimental settings. For the creative entrepreneur, however, insights are a delight. An insight is the fleeting time when your preparation, practice, and period of incubation coalesce into a stroke of genius. Whether the illumination is the solution to a seemingly impossible problem or the creation of a particularly clever melody or turn of phrase, creative people often consider it a highlight in their lives. For an entrepreneur, an insight holds the promise of success and the potential to help massive numbers of people overcome a pain point or problem. Not every insight will have a global impact, but coming up with a solution that your subconscious mind has been working on for some time is a real joy.

Evaluation

Evaluation is the purposeful examination of ideas. You will want to compare your insights with the products and ideas you encountered during preparation. You also will want to compare your ideas and product prototypes to the goals you set out for yourself during the preparation phase. Creative professionals will often invite others to critique their work at this stage. Because evaluation is specific to the expectations, best practices, and existing product leaders in each field, evaluation can take on many forms. You are looking for assurance that your standards for evaluation are appropriate. Judge yourself fairly, even as you apply strict criteria and the well-developed sense of taste you acquired during the preparation phase. For example, you might choose to interview a few customers in your target demographics for your product or service. The primary objective is to understand the customer perspective and the extent to which your idea aligns with their position.

Elaboration

The last stage in the creative process is elaboration, that is, actual production. Elaboration can involve the release of a minimum viable product (MVP). This version of your invention may not be polished or complete, but it should function well enough that you can begin to market it while still elaborating on it in an iterative development process. Elaboration also can involve the development and launch of a prototype, the release of a software beta, or the production of some piece of artistic work for sale. Many consumer-product companies, such as Johnson & Johnson or Procter & Gamble, will establish a small test market to garner feedback and evaluations of new products from actual customers. These insights can give the company valuable information that can help make the product or service as successful as possible.

At this stage what matters most in the entrepreneurial creative process is that the work becomes available to the public so that they have a chance to adopt it.

LINK TO LEARNING

Test marketing can reveal much information about the potential users of a product. Visit the Drive Research site on test markets for more information.

Innovation as More than Problem Solving

Innovative entrepreneurs are essentially problem solvers, but this level of innovation—identifying a pain point and working to overcome it—is only one in a series of innovative steps. In the influential business publication Forbes, the entrepreneur Larry Myler notes that problem solving is inherently reactive.41 That is, you have to wait for a problem to happen in order to recognize the need to solve the problem. Solving problems is an important part of the practice of innovation, but to elevate the practice and the field, innovators should anticipate problems and strive to prevent them. In many cases, they create systems for continuous improvement, which Myler notes may involve “breaking” previous systems that seem to function perfectly well. Striving for continuous improvement helps innovators stay ahead of market changes. Thus, they have products ready for emerging markets, rather than developing projects that chase change, which can occur constantly in some tech-driven fields. One issue with building a system for constant improvement is that you are in essence creating problems in order to solve them, which goes against established culture in many firms. Innovators look for organizations that can handle purposeful innovation, or they attempt to start them. Some innovators even have the goal of innovating far ahead into the future, beyond current capacities. In order to do this, Myler suggests bringing people of disparate experiential backgrounds with different expertise together. These relationships are not guarantees of successful innovation, but such groups can generate ideas independent of institutional inertia. Thus, innovators are problem solvers but also can work with forms of problem creation and problem imagination. They tackle problems that have yet to exist in order to solve them ahead of time.

Even if you are not interested in shaping the future of whole industry sectors, developing future-focused innovation practices still is a good idea. It will help you prepare for disruption. The pace of technological change is such that workers at all levels need to be prepared to innovate. Innovation leaders, such as the marketing guru Guy Kawasaki, have built on psychological principles to suggest new ways to approach innovation. According to Kawasaki, innovative products include five key qualities: deep, indulgent, complete, elegant, and emotive—DICEE (Figure 4.13).42 You can strive to infuse individual innovations with these qualities in practical ways.

Innovative products are deep (anticipating users’ needs before they have them), indulgent (having a depth of quality and richness of experience), complete (including services wrapped around a product), elegant (having an intuitive design that immediately makes sense), and emotive (evoking an intended emotion and demand to be admired).
Figure 4.13 Innovative products are deep, indulgent, complete, elegant, and emotive. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)

Deep

Deep products are based on the logic of innovation that we’ve just established and anticipate users’ needs before they have them. These types of innovations often have masterful designs that are intuitive for new users while still being capable of completing complex tasks. Adobe is an innovative corporation working in several fields, such as software, marketing, and artificial intelligence. Adobe often creates software applications with basic functions that are easily accessible to new users but that also enable experienced users to innovate on their own.43 Creating a platform for innovation is a hallmark of deep, forward-thinking innovation.

Indulgent

Innovations with lasting power engage users in ways that make them feel special for having purchased the product or for having found the service. Indulgence refers to a depth of quality that does not come from being the fastest solution to a problem. Indulgence may even sound like a negative trait. In humans, it certainly can be, but for someone using an innovative product, feeling indulgent can relate to a richness of experience with the user interface (UI). The UI of a product, particularly a software product, is what the user sees and interacts with. A feeling of indulgence imbues your product with a sense of value and durability that reassures users and encourages them to use your product confidently.

Complete

Kawasaki’s vision of a complete product includes the services wrapped around it and underlying it such that users understand the product well enough to be comfortable using it. Information about how it works and how it is meant to work is readily available. Thus, product innovation must include marketing and other communication efforts. For Kawasaki, this builds the “total user experience.”44 If you truly have solved a problem in the marketplace, users will understand what that problem is and how your product and related services deliver.

Elegant

Elegance also is part of a product’s UI. It refers to intuitive design that immediately makes sense to consumers. Elegance conveys more information with fewer words. Elegant design is not afraid of negative space or of the occasional pause. Elegant innovations solve problems without creating new ones. For Kawasaki, elegance is the difference between a pragmatic, good innovation and something great.

Emotive

Emotive innovations evoke the intended emotion and demand to be admired and shared. In other words, truly great innovations create fandoms, not just consumer bases. You can’t force people to love your product, but you can give them experiences that create a sense of excitement and anticipation of what you might come up with next.

Developing an Invention

The general process of inventing involves systematic and practical steps that might include linear and nonlinear thinking. You might think that only people with innate artistic skills are creative and that only geniuses become innovators and inventors, but much of creativity is driven by being immersed in a practice. You can build and foster your own creativity. Your idea of an inventor might be someone like Johannes Gutenberg, who developed the printing press. The spread of printing ultimately redrew the map of Europe and resulted in the foundation of new centers of learning. Gutenberg’s supposed spark actually was more of a slow burn. He was creative and innovative—one of history’s most famous inventors—but his printing press, like all other inventions, was a synthesis of existing technologies. Gutenberg’s most important innovation was his use of moveable, interchangeable metal type instead of entire hand-carved wooden blocks of text (Figure 4.14). Perfecting his printing process took decades and left him all but broke.45 The notion of the inventor’s single stroke of genius is mostly myth. The people that history remembers usually worked very hard to develop their creativity, to become familiar with the processes and tools that were ripe for innovation in their time, and ultimately to make something so unique that society recognizes it as an invention.

(a) Drawing of men working on a printing press. (b) Photo of movable type for a printing press.
Figure 4.14 Gutenberg’s invention of movable type was an important innovation in printing. (credit (a): modification of “Printer in 1568-ce” by “Parhamr”/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain; credit (b): modification of “Metal movable type” by Willi Heidelbach/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5)

The old adage claims that “necessity is the mother of invention,” but an innovator needs experience in a field, creative effort, and knowledge to be a successful inventor. Entrepreneurship means taking your efforts and knowledge, and finding a market where your invention can first survive, then thrive.

One model for developing an invention is the first five steps of a plan adapted from Sourcify.com, which specializes in connecting product developers with manufacturers.46 This process is succinct and includes suggestions for building a team along the way (Figure 4.15).

The five steps for developing an invention are educate yourself, stay organized, conduct market research, conduct patent research, and develop a prototype.
Figure 4.15 These are the five steps for developing an invention, according to Sourcify. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)

Step 1: Educate Yourself

Before your inventive product can do battle with other inventions, you will need to educate yourself. To prepare yourself to weather the competition, you need to learn as much as you can about the current investing climate, current product development opportunities, and current leadership approaches. Even if you are not deeply interested in leadership dogma, it helps to know what the current trends are in leadership and product development. To succeed as an inventor in a vast marketplace, you need to understand the rules, written and unwritten, of the industry and competitive landscape. The product development process can be quite involved. The process can vary by industry and by availability of resources.

Part of educating yourself is also gaining an understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses, and how those relate to your leadership style. A leadership style inventory can help you better understand your approach to leading others. This is just one example of many that exist to give you a starting point. As the inventor of your product or service, you will manage/lead others as you attempt to make your idea a reality. Also, the environment can constantly change. For this reason, it is important to understand the basic tenets of leadership and management in a dynamic work atmosphere. Many sources will give you insights into the challenges of management.

Another key step in educating yourself is to find out which kinds of contributors you are going to need to build a successful entrepreneurial team. Building a team is essential to making your invention a reality. Even those who invent alone—and they are quite rare—must have a development team, a manufacturing and/or service team, a marketing team, and other members with specific skill sets such as coders, graphic designers, test marketers, and more.

Step 2: Stay Organized

Most tip sheets for inventors suggest that you find a method for organizing your creativity so that you don’t spend time trying to remember previous ideas, plans, and decisions. You must organize information related to your business idea, your business plan, and your potential teammates in the process.

Contact management software has been popular for decades. Nowadays, you can investigate many other productivity and team-chat tools. Research ways to organize information about the people you plan to work with and hope to work for. The team-chat program Slack (www.slack.com) enables you to create specific topics for team members to discuss and collaborate on. Slack offers several features to help keep employees connected. Insightly (www.insightly.com) is a customer relationship management tool to stay better connected to your customers. Ryver and Glip incorporate task management. Flock and Microsoft Teams offer a host of features, with Microsoft leveraging its corporate position to bring about deployment in more than 200,000 organizations. Select the tool set that works best for you and consider paying for the software that offers the precise team communication functionality and utility you need.47

Step 3: Conduct Market Research

Market research is an obvious must, but many entrepreneurs fail to go as deeply as they should in researching their competition. You must be aware of current and future competitors so that you are prepared to compete in the marketplace when you are actually ready. Being the best on paper now won’t be much use when you enter the marketplace with an MVP in six to eight months in competition with competitors’ new products and updates.

What should you consider with regard to team development when you’re looking at the competition? Within the legal limits of any noncompete clauses, you should be shopping the competition for potential team members. The best leaders are always seeking talented people. If you sense that someone would be a good fit for your team, that they have not only the skill set but also the temperament that would help put your invention in the market, do not be afraid to reach out to them. How you reach out is something you must research for each industry. In some industries, you will have to be highly secretive. Part of market research is understanding the market well enough to understand the soft skills you need to find contributors who are already working in the industry or in an adjacent one

Step 4: Conduct Patent Research

If you expect to apply for a patent, take the time to read up on policies and procedures. Officials in the US Patent Office, or in similar bureaus in other countries, decide whether an invention is worthy of receiving a patent. A patentable invention must meet the criteria of being novel, useful, and nonobvious; it must be proven to be workable.48 Those three standards—novel, useful, and nonobvious—are subjective. So is the concept of invention, but conceptualizing invention this way sets a high bar for entrepreneurs who truly wish to make a social impact. Developing an invention that is patentable also creates a barrier against competition, which can make the difference between business success and failure. There are two types of patents. Utility patents last twenty years, and design patents usually last fourteen years. If a patent is granted, the inventor has a window of time in which to secure further funding, work to produce the product, and try to gain mass-market adoption.49 After all is said and done, you can apply your creativity to social innovations, product innovations, or service innovations. If you can combine enough innovations, add your unique creativity, and create something that survives the diffusion chasm, you can truly invent something new.

The patent basics page of the US Patent and Trademark Office’s website is roughly forty pages long.50 The utility patent process includes a thirteen-step flow chart51 that outlines the process. The patent office encourages you to use a registered patent attorney or agent. If you are skilled and diligent enough to secure a patent, you should expect to pay fees and file paperwork to maintain it for years after it is granted. We’ve already discussed the keys to securing a patent, but to reiterate, here is how an invention is defined in US patent law: “In the language of the statute, any person who ‘invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent,’ subject to the conditions and requirements of the law.”52

When building a team to make your invention a reality, finding a patent lawyer or agent is key. Even those who have advocated for hiring patent attorneys in the past now suggest that hiring a patent agent might work. What’s the difference? Patent attorneys often bill by the hour, but they offer a full suite of legal advice. As the author Stephen Key indicates, patent agents are narrowly focused on helping you get and defend your patent.53 The other limitation that Key mentions is that patent agents may write a patent application in such a way that you are less prepared to protect your invention against future legal challenges. Key quotes Gene Quinn, a leading attorney on intellectual property and patent law: “By the time you realize that you are sitting on a million-dollar invention it will be too late to do anything about it.…Patent agents as a general rule tend to be very good at describing what it is that you as an inventor show up with.” What they tend to be much less good at is describing what your invention could be. They also frequently will use terms that are more concrete and limiting than would a patent attorney. Attorneys are taught the art of being hyper-specific, which is necessary at times, but also the art of being anything but specific.”54 Patents cannot be vague, but they can be written with just the right amount of specificity to protect against similar products that may arise and threaten your market share.

Step 5: Develop a Prototype

Developing a prototype can be the most fun or the most tedious part of inventing. Much of your attitude toward developing a prototype depends on available resources, technology, and expertise. In this text, we reference the concept of the lean startup from time to time. In the lean startup model, the prototype is most often an MVP. As we saw earlier, an MVP is a version of your invention that may not be polished or complete in terms of how you envisioned it, but it functions well enough and looks good enough that you can begin to market it with reasonable hopes that it will be adopted. For other inventions, you may need to build a more advanced prototype. This requires serious investment capital, but the payoff is that users will interact with a version of the product that looks and functions more like what you had in mind during your ideation phase. As an inventor, you are responsible for establishing quality control minimums for your product. You may have to compromise on your vision, but you should not compromise on basic functionality or basic levels of quality in materials.

You have many options at the prototype development stage. You can build the prototype yourself or with a small team. You can partner with design/invention firms that specialize in helping inventors create, but you must be very careful and involve your legal representation when working with such firms to be sure that you maintain the patents and other rights to your invention. Many inventors have partnered with such firms only to see their intellectual property stolen. Another option is to get funding for your invention on Kickstarter or some other crowdfunding site, but again you must beware that establishing such a campaign puts your idea in the public sphere. “Copycatters are monitoring crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and watching for trendy products to go viral,” according to Amedeo Ferraro, an intellectual property attorney.55 Competing companies, particularly in foreign markets, actively scout Kickstarter and similar platforms for new ideas that they can manufacture and bring to market before your crowdfunding project has run its course. Perhaps most chilling is this comment regarding legal protections that do not function, even when inventors take precautions to protect their intellectual property when working with some Chinese firms: “But even with these protections, there’s no guarantee that you can stop someone from copycatting your product. [One U.S. intellectual property lawyer] said that the problem lies not in China’s courts but enforcing rulings. Winning a case against one factory is relatively easy. But suing every factory and winning is expensive and time consuming.”56 For this reason, some inventors prefer to start small and local, if possible. It can be better for them to start with a trusted team striving for a small profit and a good market position than to see the market flooded with copycat products.

Footnotes

  • 35Aleza D’Agostino. “5 Stages of the Creative Process with James Taylor.” CreativeLive. December 28, 2015. https://www.creativelive.com/blog/5-stages-of-the-creative-process-with-james-taylor/
  • 36Eugene Sadler-Smith. “Wallas’ Four-Stage Model of the Creative Process: More Than Meets the Eye?” Creativity Research Journal 27, no. 4 (2015): 342–352.
  • 37Eugene Sadler-Smith. “Wallas’ Four-Stage Model of the Creative Process: More Than Meets the Eye?” Creativity Research Journal 27, no. 4 (2015): 342–352.
  • 38Neal Zaslaw, “Mozart As a Working Stiff,” in James M. Morris, ed., On Mozart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 109.
  • 39Steven M. Smith, Thomas B. Ward, and Ronald A. Finke, eds., The Creative Cognition Approach. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.
  • 40Eugene Sadler-Smith. “Wallas’ Four-Stage Model of the Creative Process: More Than Meets the Eye?” Creativity Research Journal 27, no. 4 (2015): 342–352.
  • 41Larry Myler. “Innovation Is Problem Solving . . . And a Whole Lot More.” Forbes. June 13, 2014. https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymyler/2014/06/13/innovation-is-problem-solving-and-a-whole-lot-more/#3f11abe533b9
  • 42Guy Kawasaki. “Guy’s Golden Touch.” Guy Kawasaki. January 3, 2006. https://guykawasaki.com/guys_golden_tou/
  • 43Adobe Communications Team. “Adobe Named One of Fast Company’s ‘Most Innovative Companies’ for AI.” Adobe Blog. February 20, 2018. https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-named-one-fast-companys-innovative-companies-ai/
  • 44Guy Kawasaki. “Guy’s Golden Touch.” Guy Kawasaki. January 3, 2006. https://guykawasaki.com/guys_golden_tou/
  • 45John Man. The Gutenberg Revolution. New York: Random House, 2010.
  • 46Natalie Peters. “9 Key Steps to Bring Your Invention to Life.” Sourcify. December 11, 2017. https://www.sourcify.com/bring-your-invention-to-life/
  • 47Aleksey Chepalov. “9 Slack Competitors in 2019: What Team Chat Tools Are Leading the Way?” Chanty. March 18, 2019. https://www.chanty.com/blog/slack-competitors/
  • 48“Patent Subject Matter Eligibility.” United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). n.d. https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2106.html
  • 49“How Long Does Patent, Trademark, or Copyright Protection Last?” Intellectual Property Rights Information and Assistance. July 7, 2016. https://www.stopfakes.gov/article?id=How-Long-Does-Patent-Trademark-or-Copyright-Protection-Last
  • 50“General Information Concerning Patents.” United States Patent and Trademark Office. October 2015. https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/general-information-concerning-patents
  • 51“Process for Obtaining a Utility Patent.” United States Patent and Trademark Office. n.d. https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/patent-basics/types-patent-applications/utility-patent/process-obtaining
  • 52“What Can Be Patented” in “General Information Concerning Patents.” United States Patent and Trademark Office. October 2015. https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/general-information-concerning-patents#heading-4
  • 53Stephen Key. “Should You Hire a Patent Agent Instead of a Patent Attorney?” Inc. October 26, 2016. https://www.inc.com/stephen-key/should-you-hire-a-patent-agent-instead-of-a-patent-attorney.html
  • 54“Gene Quinn.” IP Watchdog. n.d. https://www.ipwatchdog.com/people/gene-quinn-3/
  • 55Jennifer Schlesinger, Andrea Day, Bianca Fortis, Eunice Yoon, and Lilian Wu. “How One Entrepreneur’s American Dream Turned into a Copycat Nightmare.” CNBC. April 30, 2019. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/30/how-one-entrepreneurs-american-dream-turned-into-a-copycat-nightmare.html
  • 56Josh Horwitz. “Your Brilliant Kickstarter Idea Could Be on Sale in China before You’ve Even Finished Funding It.” Quartz. October 17, 2016. https://qz.com/771727/chinas-factories-in-shenzhen-can-copy-products-at-breakneck-speed-and-its-time-for-the-rest-of-the-world-to-get-over-it/
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