Invent, Innovate, and Prosper

A Step-by-Step Guide to Successful Inventing

By: Michael G. Colburn

Narrated by: Joe Scalora

You don't need to be lucky, or a genius, to create a successful invention. You just need a clear process to spark ideas and bring them to market.

Michael Colburn is an inventor. He wasn't always, but he made himself into one and realized a powerful truth: Inventing is a skill anyone can master. Over the last four decades, he has created inventions and built businesses and partnerships worth millions of dollars based on his inventions.

Michael's success was not an accident. With every invention, he followed a clear process for finding an idea, researching, testing, and bringing it to market. Along the way, Michael studied history's great creators and realized their processes were not very different from his. Artists, writers, inventors, entrepreneurs - they all follow a similar method for bringing ideas to life. We just so rarely get to see it.

Invent, Innovate, and Prosper is a practical handbook for inventing based on Michael's decades of work as a successful inventor. He shares his step-by-step system for launching profitable inventions, along with the surprising real-life lessons that helped him thrive. You'll learn how to:

• Adopt a detective's mindset to find invention ideas in everyday life
• Research your idea's viability and troubleshoot glitches
• Design, engineer, and build prototypes with minimal financial investment
• Prepare and test your products for the market

Michael also profiles some of the world's most prolific inventors, from Alexander Graham Bell to Lori Greiner, and offers legal templates to help you navigate red tape. Whether you're already a maker or are just starting to brainstorm new products, you'll discover how to turn the kernel of an idea into a lucrative invention.

©2019 Inventing Pathways Publishing LLC (P)2019 Inventing Pathways Publishing LLC

So much benefit in this book

This is not a book on how to picture it in your head and use tools to build a prototype, you already do that. This is a very impressive book, but i forget what he said so I need to listen to it again. You will learn about yourself from this book, and you may even be inspired.

Excellent

Invent, Innovate, and Prosper is a book that I was lucky enough to read sometime back and when I saw the audio book for sale, I jumped at the chance to go over it again. The audio book sticks to the original material as I remember it , but it’s convenient to listen to it while I do other work, so I think it was a good idea and worth the effort for the author.

As I’m sure I mentioned in my original review, this book walks you through the process of inventing something new, so it’s invaluable to anyone that has an idea to share with the world, but it’s also a lot more than that. You get a good history lesson with plenty of fascinating stories about many of the world's inventions that you probably never heard before. You also get a change in perspective as the book teaches you how to look at the world in a new way and you’ll find yourself thinking of new inventions because you will know how to see what the world needs.

I really enjoyed this book and am glad I found the audio version. I recommend it to anyone with a creative mind and those that enjoy history.

A truly enlightening book for inventors and other creators

I listened to the Audible version of this book, and found it extremely useful. As an inventor, it’s easy to feel like you are alone, but Michael Colburn helps to break down many of the challenges that inventors face along the way, thanks in large part to his experience as an inventor.


I particularly enjoyed and appreciate all of the specific stories (mini biographies of people like George Westinghouse) that Mr. Colburn included throughout the book. It was also great to hear Mr. Colburn’s experiences with some of his inventions.

Presented in a clear and organized manner.

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to both read the book and listen to the audio book verson of it. Each has its advantages and better options. While having the information available to me as I performed other tasks, such as driving or gardening, cooking, etc. allowed my subconscious mind to work on the content as well as my creative ideas. Being able to consume the book content and information via reading it gave me more time for it to be absorbed and understood in different parts of my brain/mind and learning process. I found the narrator's voice easy to listen to, even soothing. However, my co-driver made me turn it off as he did not appreciate the tonality, found it was either irritating or it was putting him to sleep. So, different approaches appeal to different types.
Besides step 1 to whatever, or an A to Z approach, this book explains the act of idea creation, how to prepare your mind to be a fertile field into which ideas may be planted with best chance of successful fertilization. You do not need to have all the answers, especially How-To, at the beginning. It starts with identifying a problem to be solved, and cautions us that not all problems are meant to spend time on. Identify those with value, specifically financial or humanitarian value, to spend you time and effort on. One that will stick with me is how does one properly cook a camel, or rather, vent a camel capable cooking oven.
Michael shares with us how to prepare the mind, identify a problem to solve, and go about finding resources to solve that problem. He also alerts us to the need to keep proper records to prove the solutions we discover are our own and to protect them in order to prosper. We are introduced to inventors and other resources are provided. I found the entire book very interesting.
The format is not intimidating. It is presented in a clear and organized manner. I did find myself talking to myself in more positive terms while reading and listening to the book.