Are you an Inventor or Entrepreneur?

 Same thing you say...

I don’t agree.  Sure, some inventors can be good entrepreneurs just like some entrepreneurs are inventors. But, inventors need to do some soul searching before they embark on a journey to commercialize (bring to market) their invention.

Take the case of Terry.  He was a great inventor.  He could spot a common everyday problem a mile away and then come up with a solution.  He loved solving these problems and building a product to solve them. He had a garage full of prototypes, molds for plastic parts, tools to make parts out of wood, metal, and plastic.  He had tried to market these new fangled solutions too. He even received a couple of patents. The problem is that he only sold a few of the products.  He’s not sure why. He had paid for a web site and listed the solutions that he designed there.  Why didn’t people beat down his door to buy them?

Now he was broke.  That last product really cost a lot for the injection molds.  When he tried his bank for funding they just laughed at him.  The local angel investor group was no help either.  They said he needed a business plan.  Well, he created one.  It took him two days.  Ten full pages of technical descriptions, drawings, and pictures of his prototype.  Oh, he had a paragraph on marketing and sales too.  Still, they weren’t interested.  They said something about a value proposition, whatever that was. Now he doesn’t know what to do.  No sales, no money, and no prospects to get any.

Tom was an inventor too.  He could also see problems and solutions.  Tom was pragmatic though.  If the problem wasn’t big enough, for a large potential base of customers, he wouldn’t waste his time on it. When he did spot a problem that looked like it affected a lot of people, he would work on it.  He would also, investigate the people it affected.  How did it affect them?  Was it likely that they would pay for a solution?   If so, how much?  Was the group large enough to support a business? Could the solution become a technology that could spin off other applications, thus increasing the size of the business and lowering manufacturing and development costs? Did his solution bring value to the people who had the problem (the value proposition)?

If Tom believed that he could actually make a business from the solution to this problem, he would start to socialize the business model (what the company would do to make money).  At first, it would be with trusted friends, colleagues, and other experienced entrepreneurs that had worked with him and invested in his businesses in the past.  He would see if they got the idea.  If their eyes lit up and they got excited, he knew that it just wasn’t wishful thinking on his part. He may actually have something.
So now Tom would make a prototype, keeping it simple and not gearing up for factory tooling.  Not yet. He would also start putting together a business plan.  He would start with the problem and quickly describe the customers that the problem affected.  He knew a lot about the ideal customers for his product. He could see them in his sleep and he described them in the plan. He also knew how to reach them in the marketplace. So his marketing plan and sales plan came together quickly. When he got stuck on a section he asked for help from his friends and colleagues. They could see the plan come together and offered to join Tom in his business. Needless to say, early funding to get several prototypes completed and tested with some of his ideal customers was not too difficult.  Tom and his team learned a lot from those tests and made several key changes that would make the product much more successful.

Tom never did get a patent.  He knew that he could bring the product to the market fast, keep improving it, and spin off several other products before his competition could react.  And that is just what he did.

Terry and Tom are both inventors, but only Tom is the entrepreneur.

Todd Fisher is a Director with the Center For Entrepreneurial Growth