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Many Brains make light work
Posted: Sunday 11th Jun 2006
By Donald MacGillivray
[Reprinted from the Mail on Sunday, June 11th 2006]
The only people who really understand an inventor’s passion are other inventors. And the best way to share ideas and get support is to join an inventors club.
‘It’s a very lonely business beavering away by yourself, hour after hour,’ says Mike Overy, secretary of the Wessex Round Table of Inventors. ‘At an inventors club you exchange ideas, get some feedback and help each other.’
The Wessex Round Table is one of about 25 such societies in the UK. It has 70 members who meet at Southampton Solent University every month to listen to guest speakers and take part in clinics to discuss various problems.
Everyone signs a non-disclosure agreement promising not to steal ideas or reveal them to anyone outside the association.
One topic that comes up repeatedly is how to market an invention successfully. Frank Landamore, 59, a graphics designer from Lewes, East Sussex, believes that he would never have got his idea off the ground without help and guidance from the group.
His Grass Snake Cable Grip clips on to a trouser belt loop and holds the electric cord of a lawnmower or strimmer so that the flex always drops behind when it is in use. It is due to appear in the shops next spring and will cost about £3.
Frank says: ‘Before I joined, I had no idea how to progress, but the support and friendship has been invaluable. Now I have a viable product. Without the club I wouldn’t even have a prototype.’
The invention in question the Grass Snake Cable Grip will be demonstrated at the Innovention 2006
Show to be held at the Intech Science Centre, Winchester 0n Friday 23 June.
For more information, visit www.wrti.org.uk