Invention Creation

- We provide various forums to help our clients extract innovations

Previews, brainstorming, and harvesting - We provide various forums to help our clients extract innovations ranging from invention preview meetings with a select few individuals to multi-day harvesting sessions.  Each company and organization may have a different culture or needs and we provide options that are tailored to our client’s needs.

Preview invention meetings allow inventors to share their ideas in a smaller setting.  These meetings are most fruitful when the inventors provide their ideas before the meeting allowing us time for research so we can facilitate a more informed discussion during the meeting.  This typically saves time for the inventors and provides for a crisper meeting.  However, as often occurs in a dynamic environment, when information is not available beforehand, we still conduct preview invention meetings and work with the inventors from that starting point.

Brainstorming meetings allow for a larger group to share ideas.  This is best done when the brainstorming meeting is for a particular topic or segregated into time slots for particular topics.  The typical ground rules are that no idea is a bad idea and discussions are meant to further ideas brought forth in these meetings. Once ideas are brought forth, often a grouping process occurs to combine similar ideas.  When there are numerous ideas, the groupings may be prioritized for additional follow-up activities to generate invention disclosures.

Harvesting meetings are similar to brainstorming meetings.  Depending on the client, the harvesting meetings can be a series of brainstorming meetings for a broader topic area where the brainstorming meetings can focus on portions of the larger area.  The harvesting meetings tend to be larger meetings than brainstorming meetings but the meeting effectiveness diminishes rapidly when a meeting size becomes very large and hence, harvesting meetings are broken down in sessions or into different meetings and combined at the end.

The above are some examples.  Often, there is not a strict delineation from one forum to another depending on the company’s culture, organizational culture, and inventor preferences.  We work with our clients to identify what is the best forum(s) to extract innovations for their business.