Review: One Simple Idea

A recent Freelance Freedom episode shows our hero driving around town, criticizing the design of business signs. It gets to the point where the wife has to put on music in order to silence him.

Our irritated freelancer has a lot in common with the people profiled in Stephen Key‘s new book, One Simple Idea. Although one might think of Key as an inventor, he’d rather use the term "product developer.

Why? Because of the negative connotation that the word "inventor has. Key notes that many people think of inventors as "hermit[s] with thick glasses, wild hair, and a pocket protector stuffed with pens.

Ouch. That’s rough.

But since this is a book about licensing your ideas, it would be a good idea to make a good impression on the companies you’re pitching.

Now, you may have heard about what Key calls "the conventional method of bringing an idea to market. It involves creating prototypes, getting patents, and building a company. Not the sort of thing that you became a freelancer in order to do.

Not to worry. You don’t have to.

This book outlines a 10-step strategy for creating and licensing your ideas:

1. Study the Marketplace. This can be as simple as going shopping. Or, like our design-irked Freelance Freedom guy, taking a drive around town. If you see something in need of improvement, there’s your opportunity.
2. Innovate for the Market. In this step, you’re not inventing a new way to travel to Mars. Rather, you’re developing a way to add value, novelty to an existing product.
3. Prove Your Idea. Will it sell? And can it be manufactured at the right price? (The lower the per-unit manufacturing cost, the better.)
4. Create a Prototype. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does have to attract attention.
5. Create a Benefit Statement. Yes, we’re talking elevator speeches. Just keep it to one sentence.
6. Create a Sell Sheet. This is a one-page document that shows your idea and outlines its benefits.
7. Protect Your Idea with a Provisonal Patent. At this writing, such a patent costs US $110.
8. Keep Pitching Until Someone Says Yes. Be forewarned that this effort will involve a lot of cold calling.
9. Cut a Good Deal for Both Parties. The book has quite a bit to say about contracts, and the author has become quite adept at doing his own negotiating. But he’s been at this game for 30 years and knows what a good deal looks like. In time, you’ll get there too. In the meantime, make sure that your attorney reviews the contract that you’re offered. And learn all that you can about intellectual property licensing.
10. Keep Developing Ideas. This is a business that favors the repeat winners, rather than the one-hit wonders.

This strategy is one that will allow you to keep your freelance business going, if that’s what you want to do. Or it can offer a new opportunity for you.

Case in point: One of the book’s more inspiring examples features a disabled musician. According to Key, he "developeda ‘locking stud’ that kept a guitar’s bridge from falling off when replacing the strings and also improved the intonation and ‘sustain’ of the strings.

In 1998, he began licensing the studs (which are actually a pair of screws) to guitar component manufacturers. He’s made millions of dollars since then.