Inventor Book Reviews

Evaluating Potential New Products

By Gerald G. Udell, PhD, 1995, 277 pages (paperback), $21.95, Innovation Institute, Route 2 Box 184, Everton, MO 65646.

It is no secret that many -- very many -- new products fail.  How can you prevent having your new product, process or service added to this list of broken dreams? This book is the result of over twenty years of work in developing a system for evaluating new products.  More than 10,000 products were evaluated.  The system presented in this book is the eighth generation version.  It is known as PIES-VIII -- Preliminary Innovation Evaluation System 8.

Oddly, despite all the praise heaped upon the individual inventor and entrepreneur -- such as "companies of less than 100 employees account for 24% of the major innovations" -- the industrial nations are stagnating market-wise due to regulations and the "super cautious attitude of (corporate) management".  The first step in overcoming these hurdles is an honest, objective product evaluation.

The basic purpose of a product evaluation is to reduce your risks and costs in time, money and effort.  Also, it should give you a realistic picture of the payoff of your invention and should provide strategies for product development.

Briefly, the system considers 41 aspects of your product, process or service.  Among the considerations are legality, investment costs, market research, promotion, distribution and overall market attractiveness.  In each aspect or category, you are asked to decide which of five possible descriptions fits your product.  This may involve, for example, if the cost of distribution will be very high, high, moderate, low or very low.  If you don't know, you can "DK" your reply -- or if you feel it does not apply to your product, you can "NA" your reply.  The evaluator decides which reply fits.  Obviously, review by a trained, impartial and objective evaluator is desirable.  (Sources for low-cost evaluations, such as the Wal-Mart Innovation Network (WIN) are provided.)

The evaluation summary opinion and recommendation are based on two scales -- an SLR (Success Likelihood Ratio) and a CDR (Comparative Distribution Ranking) scale.  Scoring under 30 on the SLR results in a "not recommended" opinion and over 41 results in a "recommended" opinion.  Ratings between 30 and 41 imply various levels of risk.  The CDR scale compares how your invention ranks against other recent evaluations using the PIES system.  The author notes that few inventions (like 1%) are given a Success Likelihood Rating above 30.  This is because this preliminary evaluation cannot know the other crucial factors such as "sound management, adequate financing and good marketing".

A large part of the book is devoted to giving explanations for the questions in each of the 41 aspects of the evaluation.  Reading these in detail -- and with an open mind -- should result in avoiding much wasted effort, recognizing low potentials, and in developing strategies for your future efforts.

Inventors and entrepreneurs often become so familiar with their product that they fail to see it from the consumers' viewpoint.  Under factor 19 -- Use-Pattern Compatibility -- the author drives this point home with the extreme example of trying to compete with McDonalds by devising a fast-food made from snakes or fried termites.  It might be "cheaper, tastier, more nutritious" -- but would it be able to overcome existing "attitudes, perceptions and use patterns"? Under factor 23 -- Visibility -- he describes a Christmas bulb introduced by General Electric in the 1960s.  It pleased those who purchased it -- but its inadequate (unlighted) display failed to convey to customers what it would look like in use.  It was withdrawn.

The author does a good job of blasting the many fraudulent "invention marketing firms" that prey upon inventors.  In one case, only six of 35,000 clients made more than one dollar!  He cautions against starting out too big.  Start small.  You can overcome small mistakes when perfecting and marketing your product -- but a big mistake can kill any product.  He makes the point that many invention failures are not failures of the invention itself -- but are due to the excessive pride and greed of the inventor.  His "six errors inventors make when approaching industry" is a must read for every earnest inventor.

The author has observed that, over the past twenty years, inventors have increased their success rate.  Part of this is due to the more than 140 helpful inventors' groups that have sprung up around the nation and part is due to more and more inventors coming to realize that "A better mousetrap is but one quart in a gallon -- production, finance and marketing make up the other three quarts".

This evaluation system grew up in an academic and corporate world -- but this book is about as hands-on and down to earth as possible.  It is an easy read -- and a must read for every serious inventor and entrepreneur.