Inventor Inquiry One — THE PROBLEM

The first in a 101-part series of questions every inventor should answer before spending another dollar.

What problem have you actually solved?

Inventors love solutions.

We sketch them. Build them. Improve them. Explain them. Sometimes we become so absorbed in the thing we've created that we forget to go back and examine the reason it exists in the first place.

So Inventor Inquiry begins there.

Not with your patent.

Not with your prototype.

Not with your brilliant mechanism, clever app, new material, or better mousetrap.

With the problem.

What problem have you actually solved?

Notice the word actually.

It's doing a lot of work in that question.

You may have identified an inconvenience. An annoyance. An inefficiency. Something you personally wish worked differently.

But is it a real problem for other people?

How often does it occur?

How serious is it?

What do people do about it now?

And here's the uncomfortable one:

Do they care enough about the problem to do something differently?

That last question has stopped more than a few promising-looking inventions in their tracks.

And it should.

THE SOLUTION IS NOT THE PROBLEM

Inventors sometimes describe the problem by describing what's missing:

“There isn't a product that does this.”

That's not necessarily a problem.

The absence of your solution is not evidence that anybody needs it.

Try describing the problem without mentioning your invention at all.

Instead of:

“My invention lets people open this kind of package with one hand.”

Try:

“People who have only one hand available regularly struggle to open this package without putting it down, using their teeth, or asking for help.”

Now we have something we can investigate.

Who are these people?

How often does this happen?

What do they do now?

Does it bother them?

What does the workaround cost them—in time, money, safety, frustration, independence, or something else?

Those answers begin to tell you whether you're solving a problem worth solving.

Most invention processes begin by examining the solution.

Inventor Inquiry deliberately begins one step earlier: proving that the problem deserves the solution.

GO FIND THE PROBLEM

Don't sit at your desk and imagine the answers.

Look.

Ask.

Watch.

Find five people who experience the problem you believe you've solved.

Don't begin by showing them your invention.

Ask them how they deal with the situation today.

Listen especially carefully for workarounds.

Rubber bands. Clamps.

Duct tape. (Yes, I said duct tape. There's a reason it's so ubiquitous!)

Two people doing a one-person job.

A spreadsheet somebody made themselves.

A tool being used for something it was never intended to do.

A step everybody hates but accepts because “that's just how it's done.”

Workarounds can be wonderful evidence.

They show that somebody cares enough about a problem to improvise a solution.

And occasionally you'll discover something even more valuable:

The problem you thought you were solving isn't the real problem.

That's not failure.

That's discovery.

BEFORE YOU SPEND ANOTHER DOLLAR...

Write the problem in one sentence.

No product name.

No description of your invention.

No “there ought to be.”

Just this:

Who has what problem, under what circumstances, and why does it matter?

Then go find evidence that you're right.

Your invention can wait a moment.

The problem came first.

Make sure it's really there.

INVENTOR INQUIRY

101 questions to answer before you spend another dollar on your invention.

Inventor Inquiry is a continuing series for independent inventors, product developers, and anyone trying to turn an idea into something real. Each article takes one question from the full 101 and looks more closely at what you should know, test, prove, or reconsider before committing more time, money, energy, or hope.

The Q-Sheet

All 101 Inventor Inquiry questions in one concise working document.

Keep it beside your project. Mark it up. Circle the questions you cannot yet answer. Revisit them as your invention develops.

Coming soon.

The Workbook

A deeper companion to the 101 questions, with explanations, examples, exercises, evidence to gather, common mistakes to avoid, and space to work through your own answers.

In development.

The Workshops

Guided Inventor Inquiry sessions for inventors who want to work through the difficult questions with other people in the room—testing assumptions, finding gaps, and deciding what to do next.

First workshops coming soon.

Inventor Inquiry — Before You Spend Another Dollar.

ABOUT DAVID ALAN FOSTER

David Alan Foster has spent much of his career working with inventors, entrepreneurs, designers, creators... with systems and ecosystems. He founded Invent! Magazine and helped organize InvenTech, one of the early trade shows devoted to independent inventors and innovation. Today he publishes Useful Ideas and continues working with inventors, startups, and organizations developing products that are actually useful. He loves products that fundamentally improve people's lives.