I completely agree with the remarks of Mr. Setiawan. Innovations are dependent of a number of conditions: historical and cultural trends, time spirit, society needs, economic conjucture, country politics,...etc.

* Why does one product becomes a success while another cannot reach the market! Huge multinational players have a tremendous network of sellers, distributors, market researchers,... and can affort a failure. For someone who has to start (start-up, spin-off, spin-out) is confronted with many problems to overcome and still has to build confidence, relations, networking,... so much more difficult to convince VCs, seed capital investors,... to open the perspectives.

* Why does one company succeed, while another does not. I see many inventors with wonderful ideas (and even prototypes), but the way from idea generation to the market is a huge gap. Many of these inventors try to protect their ideas (read products) because they need something before negotiating with people. The main problem here is that they don't know if the market needs these products? So, you'll need to invest before certainty of the needs. The US patent system developped of system in order to support this, namely a grace period. This is a kind of testing period to find out the opportunities meanwhile.

To conclude, some products are time-related, temporary, short-term, local and often dependent of others (related and associated parts of a bigger product). This makes that other people have to be awakened about the opporunities. Moreover, national politics and the local innovation environment (read legislation) can be helpful but can also be a mountain to climb on... When we take the example of the conversion of the local currency units into Euro in 2000. So many products like coin holders, coin distributors, holographic conversion cards,... were put on the market shortly and in a huge quantity, but with a very short lifetime.

Hi, intellectual property rights, such as patents, can help an innovator to protect his devolpments in the early stages. However, patents are limited in their scope (subject, geographically and lifetime), which opens opportunities in later stages for those who want to improve the technologies or even for those who want to design around the existing technologies. You'll need to make a difference between "basic" patents, those who protect the core features of a technology and "improvement" patents, which solve small problems within and around the basic technologies. This means that inventors and innovators should be aware of the market potential of these improvements, especially those from SMEs or even private inventors before starting R&D. Does society need such products or methods and who will buy or commercialise these products or methods? What will be the cost to put the product on the market? Who are my competitors and how do they act on the market? A product or method that solves a high need or that makes life easier, which is not too expensive to produce and that has a sufficient quality standard are very important to me. We see that, as you mention in your question, that the gap between patentable products and marketed products is often too big. Unfortunately, you'll to patent first, even before knowing if the product has market potential. On the other hand, some products are developped at the right time when the market pulled or pushed in order to solve societal problems (like disasters, climate change, public health,...). To resume, I think that succesful products require: price/quality, human need, environmental conditions and safety.

Market need and/or market leader. If something usefull is invented, but market didnt repond, it will be a failed innovation. For example in my country, car headlamp in the past (around 20 years ago) always like a standard lamp, Nissan (if I'm not mistaken) suddenly give a car that have a projected head lamp. It didnt go well in the market. But nowdays projected head lamp become a trend, so it like a comeback, car becoming more and more have projected head lamp.

In the other hand, a market leader like Apple can push an invention that market didnt need (like iphone) into an innovation. Its depend how much a company or a person within the company can influence the market

I completely agree with the remarks of Mr. Setiawan. Innovations are dependent of a number of conditions: historical and cultural trends, time spirit, society needs, economic conjucture, country politics,...etc.

* Why does one product becomes a success while another cannot reach the market! Huge multinational players have a tremendous network of sellers, distributors, market researchers,... and can affort a failure. For someone who has to start (start-up, spin-off, spin-out) is confronted with many problems to overcome and still has to build confidence, relations, networking,... so much more difficult to convince VCs, seed capital investors,... to open the perspectives.

* Why does one company succeed, while another does not. I see many inventors with wonderful ideas (and even prototypes), but the way from idea generation to the market is a huge gap. Many of these inventors try to protect their ideas (read products) because they need something before negotiating with people. The main problem here is that they don't know if the market needs these products? So, you'll need to invest before certainty of the needs. The US patent system developped of system in order to support this, namely a grace period. This is a kind of testing period to find out the opportunities meanwhile.

To conclude, some products are time-related, temporary, short-term, local and often dependent of others (related and associated parts of a bigger product). This makes that other people have to be awakened about the opporunities. Moreover, national politics and the local innovation environment (read legislation) can be helpful but can also be a mountain to climb on... When we take the example of the conversion of the local currency units into Euro in 2000. So many products like coin holders, coin distributors, holographic conversion cards,... were put on the market shortly and in a huge quantity, but with a very short lifetime.

I agree, but sometime a patented innovation are also will not developed into innovation because of various reason, market is the huge factor. So there are huge 'death valley' of innovation out there. And it used up considerable resources. So how to select idea that will be developed into invention is an important factor. In fact there is many system to filter idea to be developed into invention, like Cooper's Stage-gate system, so time and money will not be wasted in developing idea into innovation that will not accepted by market. So the trick is how to reduce 'death valley' of innovation. But in the other hand it will reduce chance an invention will be developed further into another invention that maybe market will accept

Thanks for your responses, Sigit Setiawan and Nico Deconinck .

I think it's very difficult to know the future. Even using Cooper's Stage-gate system or other guided systems such as Quality Function Deployment of Yoji Akao and other oriented Voice of Customers/Market systems. Maybe, using this guiding systems the creative idea generation could be limited. That is to say, these systems also could actuate as a barrier for idea evolution curves, although sometimes will catalize it.

Maybe we can also use hype cycle to see maturity of particular technology. So, we can at least directed R&D effort or idea generation, so it will not waste any resources.

In the other hand, in my opinion, we need to safely storage or codified any idea that have been generated because no one know that that idea can be used in the future. So we doesn't need to re-generated it. That is the role of knowledge management.

Very interesting, Sigit Setiawan , the idea of save ideas. As some ideas have different applicantions, at least if we design by analogy, maybe there exists a standard idea form for codified it, such as tools usable to solve problems in different fields (inventive ideas, similar to TRIZ inventive principles).

Dear all, please note that already some initiatives have been launched to gather ideas, like i-depot of BOIP (in Benelux) and market places to match ideas with potential business partners. Unfortunately, I don't know if this works. Many of the idea generators (as well as inventors) are also too afraid to share their ideas (which seems logic), but which is also one of the thresholds to overcome. We see that the idea box in companies can be helpful but in order to support these initiatives, people has to be motivated. What can be a motivation :) Indeed! So we get a struggle between on one hand protection by IP or open source strategy. I think that good ideas are already killed before they get the change to explore...as a result of these dilemmas.

I agree Nico Deconinck , there are many initiative already made to save ideas, in fact thats one of the purpose knowledge management is, and it been translate into IT based solution. To codified knowledge/idea, that the key. But how it can be retrieve in time and when it needed is the main question. The IT solution must smart enough (maybe using AI) to identify the need of organization/company and present a solution based on ideas that already been stored. A pattern based algorithm maybe the key, because like complex system, real world problem is always a pattern. And pattern based algorithm, is actually solution like TRIZ are based from, Juan David Cano-Moreno

Many thanks to Nico Deconinck and Sigit Setiawan for your insights.

It is very difficult to predict the success of an idea ... perhaps personal motivation needs, on many occasions, financial support for the bet to be a winner.

Juan David Cano-Moreno : I think its combination of market need that come from local culture and market leader. Unfortunately sometime there is nothing to do with the newness of the invention. Some so called 'new innovation' its already invented many-many years ago, but because there is market need or/and there are market leader that act as trend setter, than suddenly there is a big market niche for that so called 'new innovation'