On Milwaukee’s Northshore, the local public library is becoming the go-to place for launching innovative products.
For just about a year now, the Northshore Inventors and Entrepreneurs’ Forum has met at the Frank L. Weyenburg Public Library in Mequon. The Northshore "I&E Club" has become a gathering place for inventors, patent attorneys, investors, overseas and domestic manufacturers and product marketing representatives.
More than 70 of them attended the meeting, some driving from as far as Green Bay and Eau Claire. The club has a Web page, on which monthly topics are posted, often subject to change as business opportunities and new venues open up and the schedule is changed to address them.
I&E clubs like this one, seed-funded by a grant from the Wisconsin Department of Commerce, are springing up all over the state. Each club has its own focus with varying degrees of formality. Some are run by chambers of commerce, some by local economic development agencies.
I like to think that our Northshore club is a particularly catalytic club. Our club’s structure is loose, featuring informal panels of successful inventors who’ve broken into "big box" stores, marketing gurus, experts on sourcing to China and India. Powerpoints are discouraged at our club. There is no commercial sponsorship.
Since no one has paid to stand at the podium, topics are selected on based on the benefit to the group. The club is a forum for the exchange of actual knowledge and experience that would either be billed out at consulting rates and early stage inventors could not afford or would be held close to the vest by companies never made available at all. The club is my personal passion because, as a patent attorney, it is the place where I learn about the realities of the markets in which the patents I draft are commercialized. It is the smartest two hours I spend each month.
I’m particularly proud that the Northshore club (which I help facilitate) has inspired inventors to produce products, perfect prototypes and enter non-traditional markets that are national in scope. Clubbies have shared information about how to test-market products via Internet, get prototypes made and tested, land government contracts and get in the door to present products to companies. Several have landed actual licensing agreements or found funding by demonstrating sales and document in g markets.
Based on the track record of the I&E clubs as a whole throughout the state, the Wisconsin Department of Commerce has funded them for a second year in a row, awarding $1,000 to each existing club. Here are some of the reasons why the Department of Commerce views I&E clubs as so important:
- Every successful product sold from Wisconsin brings dollars into the state. Product sales create jobs. Many successful businesses have grown from the nucleus of a single, successful product to a major vendor of an entire line of products using the marketing skills and channels they developed for the first product.
- It’s in the state’s interests to make sure that entrepreneurs destined to start successful businesses do so on Wisconsin soil.
- Just as many economically successful product ideas are conceived by ordinary people working in their fields of endeavor as by PhD’s in white lab coats. Many commercially successful products are low-tech, appealing and simplify life. Post-it’s are just as commercially valuable as a concept in the marketplace as Blackberries.
- It is a reality that many companies are looking to individual inventors for ideas and solutions. For example, Proctor & Gamble has predicted that 50 percent of its new product ideas will come from individual inventors.
Jobs created from micro-businesses are stable and productive. Our garage inventors often employ entire families, creating a multi-generational job training ground and a culture of entrepreneurship that no public school system can touch. Entrepreneurs generally do not punch clocks, initiate labor disputes, call in sick or file workers comp claims for carpal tunnel syndrome. They are too busy creating national markets for their products and bringing dollars into our state.
Let’s consider a few vignettes from our Northshore club:
John Suckow, our club’s co-facilitator, conceived his first invention while employed laying flooring. His invention, a successful flooring tool, enjoys a worldwide market. Encouraged, he has gone on to invent and sell thirty other products. His young son holds two patents. John has created a culture of entrepreneurship that will last into the next generation.
One young woman, with a baby on her hip, showed me (a patent attorney) her market research for a hobby related product. She has just signed a licensing agreement with a game and hobby item manufacturer for national distribution of the product which will supplement her day job as a nursing home. In the process, at my insistence, she has learned to use a computer and gained skills that no community college curriculum could convey.
One savvy entrepreneur in our club purchased a dormant patent from her prior employer and is negotiating a $1.2 million sales agreement with a transportation company with the help of contacts she met at the I&E club
A group of PhD and university student members have bonded at a recent meeting in discussing their dilemma of being required to publish a thesis without patenting their ideas. They are preparing themselves, through the club, to leave an academic environment and contribute to an entrepreneurial one.
I&E clubs are a minimal economic investment for the state and each meeting offers a sampling of Wisconsin’s potential. They are helping build our state’s future, one successful product at a time.
Jill Gilbert Welytok is a registered patent attorney and co-facilitator of the Northshore Inventors and Entreprenuers Forum. She also is the author of the "Entrepreneurs’ Guide to Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, Tradesecrets and Licensing." Learn more about the forum at www.milwaukeepatents.com/inventors.html.
