Why do you think very often any product that come on the market fail?

The Number One reason that new or existing product initiatives fail is that management falls in love with their product. They believe they have an excellent product and often act in reliance on the assumed fact the product is great. This often causes them to disregard, dispute, dislike, disown or disrupt the crucial sales and marketing processes.

We refer to this condition as Inventoritis* and no product company is immune to this terrible condition.

inventoritis n. Any of a group of disorders usually characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, paranoia, delusions and hallucinations accompanied in many cases by a portfolio containing granted patent applications and other forms of intellectual property including trade secrets. Inventoritis is associated with depressed or non-existent product sales and defects in product marketing programs and is caused by excessive reliance on the assumed idea that one’s product or idea is an excellent one.

Venture capital professionals often deal with people who suffer from inventoritis. The classic scenario is one in which someone who has invented something and has managed to obtain an issued patent subsequently fails to recover the costs that went into the development and patenting process. This occurs in the case of the vast majority of patents issued to individuals who were not performing the work on behalf of a corporate or institutional research and development activity. These individuals often lack expertise in marketing, sales and business in general while having unreasonably high expectations of the value of their product or idea. The typical outcome is the product or idea does not reach the market and the inventor often casts the blame upon others including engineers, lawyers, financiers, managers or any other professionals who would challenge or question the assumption the product or idea is an excellent one.

Companies and individuals that have Inventoritis do not consistently:

• Strive to be the best of the best

• Conduct adequate research or market testing trials

• Create adequate systems and processes

• Strive to affiliate with the best of the best

• Establish a sound research and development process

• Leverage all of the opportunities on the table

• Execute effectively

• Avoid common pitfalls learned from the mistakes of others

• Repeat rather than ignore or reinvent tried and true methods

• Plan or execute marketing strategies effectively

• Seek to properly understand the competition or marketplace

• Work smarter, better, faster, cheaper or harder than necessary to win

• Look for ways to control or access credible channels

• Budget enough money for their product launch or product campaign

• Create amazing relationships with their staff, clients or investors

• Connect with amazing distributors or value chain partners

• Price their products properly

• Follow key industry and customer trends

• Work effective sales campaigns

• Lobby for media coverage

• Focus on a well-defined markets

• Seek outside help

• Get rich

It seems few inventors fully appreciate that in bringing a new product or idea to market, usually less than 10% of the job has been done in the process of conceiving and prototyping into a production-ready form, whether or not it is patentable or patented.