Publications and Links to Help with Idea Generation
The following links provide useful information on innovation and product development for small businesses and inventors:
Articles and Reference sites
Creativity Solutions
Magazines, Books, and Publications
Articles and Reference sites
Product Development and Management Association glossary
This glossary from the Product Development and Management Association is quite up-to-date and the most complete available on the Web. Many of the definitions are drawn from current textbooks on the topic of new product development.
New Product Development Solutions
This glossary is made available by a private consulting firm, DRM Associates, on their New Product Development Solutions Web site. While somewhat biased toward software development, it also includes many useful terms related to the manufacture of new products not covered by the PDMA's glossary.
Product Development Forum
DRM Associates is a private consulting firm specializing in new product development for manufacturing and software industries. This Web source page does not recommend private firms; however, DRM publishes at no charge this product development forum, which could be of use to new product developers. It includes an impressively wide array of topical articles.
Steven Eppinger's academic publications
A professor of business specializing in the new product development process, Steve Eppinger has arranged his academic work and presentations in a convenient format. Eppinger's work is easily understood and discusses a wide variety of topics related to the product development process.
Entrepreneur.com's Inventor Section
Part portal, part publication, this page links to a number of useful resources for inventors, including a start-up cost calculator and advice on successfully getting an idea to market. The site focuses on individual inventors looking to commercialize their original ideas.
15 Principles of Product Development
John Stark Associates is a private consulting firm focusing on the development of new products. This article emphasizes quality improvement and development-cycle time reduction, and addresses the relationship between changing business environments and the development of new products. The firm's home page presents additional interesting links.
New Product Development Process Framework
Kenneth E. Homa, a professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business presents his framework for the new product development process. It is generally a reiteration of the stages discussed here, but with more emphasis on conducting the states concurrently.
Better Product Design
This page provides information about improving product design, from the University and London's Royal College of Art. This page emphasizes how to develop the appropriate blend of the aesthetic and functional aspects of product design. The page includes several quite useful diagrams illustrating different ways of understanding the objectives and practice of good design.
Engineers Edge
Reference site with many pages of standard material specification charts, from standard screw thread dimensions to material hardness rating conversions. Of particular interest during the development stage is this design data resource page.
Bad Designs
This site provides a forum for discussing and analyzing poor product designs. On this page you can find a long listing of poorly designed products and analysis of why. Interesting and informative reading.
The Big Idea: Invention and Innovation
This MSNBC.com site archives various invention and innovation news items, opinion pieces and tips for innovators. Included are articles on patenting, commercialization, inventor fraud and new technologies.
Preparing to Get a Patent
This article by Ronald J. Riley offers advice for inventors on market preparations before beginning the patenting procedure. It is one of a series of articles on the InventerEd website.
Creativity Solutions
Creativity Pool
The Creativity Pool is a community site intended to enable inventors to share ideas and expertise with each. Inventors can post ideas to bulletin boards for others to evaluate, take inspiration from, or build upon the ideas posted. Generally, the ideas posted are consumer needs, rather than solutions, making this site of greatest use to inventors trolling for potential new product concepts. Ideas are organized by market and category.
Ideashop
This page focuses on techniques for the generation of ideas, including standard methods such as brainstorming, nominal group technique, and brain writing. It also covers some of the nuts-and-bolts issues of group idea generation, including useful tools such as whiteboards and sticky pads.
American Creativity Association
A national organization based in Philadelphia, the American Creativity Association focuses on providing networking support and education to individuals working in capacities requiring consistently performing creativity. This group would be of greatest use to individuals living in cities with local chapters, a directory of which is available here.
Creativity Based Information Solutions
An exceptionally useful tool maintained by the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College, this page provides a searchable database of creativity literature. Most of the sources cited here focus on creativity in general and may not always be of use to device inventors specifically. Includes listings for journal and magazine articles, books, and other forms of media.
Innovation Tools
A community and portal page created specifically for business executives, but of use to anyone engaged in the daily development of new business ideas. Created by P.R. and marketing professional Chuck Frey, this page caters somewhat to these disciplines. However, on balance, it is a useful tool for any creative business discipline.
The Innovation Group
The Innovation Group intends to foster the development of innovation as a discipline that can be practiced and re-created by organizations. A private consulting firm, the Innovation Group also provides useful tools on its Web page at no charge, including this innovation capacity audit and a daily creativity anecdote intended to inspire thinking.
Magazines, Books, and Publications
Many books and magazines are published on the topic of new product development and invention. The links presented here represent only a small sampling of these resources, focusing on those cited most often on independent Web pages about invention and development.
Periodicals (online and print)
Visions
A publication of the Product Development and Management Association, Visions is among the leading sources of information about the development and commercialization of new products. The current articles are made available free-of-charge to non-members and include surprisingly in-depth and serious discussions of issues in product design.
Inventors' Digest
The monthly print publication of the United Inventors Association, the Inventor's Digest covers topics such as navigating the world of patent protection and the objective assessment of ideas. Unfortunately, only select archival articles are available online; however, these tend to cover the basic, widely applicable issues in invention.
The Industrial Physicist
The home page of The Industrial Physicist magazine, a publication for scientists working on commercial applications for their research. This site makes available a range of interesting articles, from this one on creating a successful startup to this one on a scientific to managing competition in the marketplace.
Design News
An interesting and well-packaged magazine features articles of interest to new product engineers. Online version includes a portion of print content for free. Among the more useful aspects of the online version is the directory of resources arranged by sector along the left-hand side.
Innovation
A quarterly publication of the Industrial Designers Society of America. Innovation archives can be searched as far back as 1981, free to members and non-members.
Manufacturing.net
A portal site aggregating links and magazine content from a variety of manufacturing and product development publications. This site casts quite a wide net in terms of industries and product types covered, so it could take some time to find information of interest.
Books
Great Idea Gear
This page links to a sampling of books available on the topic of invention, which can also be purchased at this site.
The PDMA ToolBook for New Product Development
As the leading organization in the field of product development, the PDMA's books provide an authoritative source of the latest thinking in new product development. This toolbook provides techniques and approaches for the development of specific product ideas.
The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development
In conjunction with the above Toolbook, the Handbook provides both overview of product development techniques and a toolkit approach to working on existing projects.
Product Design and Development
While fairly expensive at about $100, this book by Karl T. Ulrich and Steven D. Eppinger comes highly recommended as an authoritative and comprehensive guide the development and design of new products.
Johanna Rothman's Web Log, on Managing Product Development
This Web log is published by a management consultant focusing on team developing new products. It does not always directly address new product development — so some information may not be of use — however, much of it is of interest to individuals managing product development teams.