Service
Start from the problem you already understand
Most people do not arrive with an invention. They arrive with a field they know well and a problem that keeps reappearing. Idea discovery is the structured conversation that turns that knowledge into one or more concrete invention directions you can test.
- Who it is for
- Students and early-career researchers choosing a direction
- You provide
- Your field and, if you have one, a sub-area
- You receive
- One preliminary concept direction described in plain language
Who this is for
- Students and early-career researchers choosing a direction
- Domain experts who see the same failure repeatedly
- Founders exploring a product space before committing engineering time
What you provide
- Your field and, if you have one, a sub-area
- The problem, who it affects, and why current approaches fall short
- Any constraints: cost, materials, regulation, environment, skill level
What you receive
- One preliminary concept direction described in plain language
- The proposed mechanism — what actually does the work
- Possible differentiators to investigate further
- The questions that would most affect novelty or feasibility
- A recommended next step: search, develop, prototype, or pause
Process
How this work runs
Each step has an output you can read. If a step changes the answer to "stop here", we tell you at that step rather than at the end.
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01
Frame
We restate the problem in inventive terms: what fails, under what conditions, and what a better outcome looks like.
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02
Explore
We map adjacent technologies and solution spaces, including approaches borrowed from other fields.
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03
Shape
We select the direction with the clearest technical distinction and describe its mechanism.
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04
Direct
We tell you what to verify next and which service answers that question.
An idea direction is exploratory. It is not a novelty search, a patentability assessment, or a legal opinion, and it does not establish any right. Whether a concept can be protected depends on prior art, claim scope, jurisdiction, and your own disclosure history.
Often taken next
- Prior-art search — Structured searching of patent and non-patent literature, with the strategy documented.
- Patentability assessment — Analysis of what the references mean for novelty, inventive step, and claim scope.
- Questions people ask before starting
Not sure this is the right service?
Describe the situation and we will name the step that answers your question first — even when that step is not one of ours.