The Inventor's Mind

After a long, eventful, and very productive week Chris, Andy, and I have parted ways and returned to our respective homes. We lived the life for four days in Las Vegas walked numerous miles through the convention center for the National Hardware and Garden Tradeshow and had many great business dinners and breakfasts. All in all it was one of our most productive tradeshows to date. We secured many great leads for licensing products, caught up with old friends and and industry contacts and made new ones. Las Vegas is an interesting place its like a huge mirage in the middle of the desert, nothing seems real and it at times seems like one big illusion. The fun things I highly suggest you doing when in Vegas: If you have a chance, see a Cirque De Soleil performance( there are seven to choose from) they are all stunning, visit Tao in the Venetian Hotel there is 30 foot Buddha in the dining room and the food is amazing,lf you need a break from the bright lights head out to the desert,within 45 minutes there are several fantastic national parks.

A few things that we noticed from the show and everyone should keep their eyes open for are:

1. Powersquid- Had great exposure at the show, it was relaunched under the Stanley brand and was front and center in their booth, they are releasing four new models and have more lined up for the future.

2. Command 1- The line of 14 products that we redesigned for the Westinghouse brand were out front and center as well, looking very stunning I might add.

3. The Tough horse- is an innovative take on the sawhorse which solves the problem of them just being awkward and having multiple components. Not to mention its just cool which means a lot in the world of design.

If you want a closer look at our trip you can see our pictures on our new facebook page at Trident Design, LLC.

-Nile

Business First

This totally slipped my mind and fell into the cracks but i think its important enough to mention even at this late date.  It is a really cool article titled “Follow the fun” about Chris.  The Columbus edition of Business First the premier periodical covering local,national, and international business and businesses has used one of Chris’s cool and innovative jobs as one of their front page stories.  The interview took place about two months ago and was set up by the hardest working marketing assistant in the world (me).  They followed up a few weeks ago to snap a couple of photos of Chris sporting some Onion Goggles, and the rest is history.  The issue printed on the 15TH of April, which was also my birthday and is likely located in a store near you .  The article is great, it focuses on the importance of fun in the creative process. We slowly we are building awareness of Trident Design and what we are all about.  So if your interested grab a copy and  read up on us, or you can get a sneak peek at their website Follow The Fun article

-Nile

Housewares Show 2011

After a long hiatus of various events, eleven days spent with his family in St. Croix immediately followed by four days in Chicago for the Housewares show, Chris has made his way back to Trident, Columbus, and all the other things in his life.  Besides a tan, he brought back some interesting tales of things to come in the houseware market, some from Trident and some from others.  I would imagine that most people who read this blog are familiar with our company, but for those who aren’t a large portion of the products we work on are in the kitchen department.  Some of the products we have on the market like the Perfect Peeler, the Onion Goggles, or the Cut N’ Serve were born at the housewares show, and this year a few more made their way to Chicago to be oohed and awed.  Amongst those were the java mitt(with RSVP), a flexible silicone cup handle for take away cups, the Style Station (with Polder), a bathroom organizer/caddy, and the Pitzo(with Lifetime Brands and Rosle), an innovative pizza cutter that has yet to hit the market.   A few more things that Chris mentioned to look out for were:

· Black and Blum- a very stylish and well designed line of kitchen gadgets

· Joseph Joseph- innovative utensils for your culinary needs

· De La Terra- one of Chris’s favorites, this line is composed of beautifully crafted organic culinary pottery

-Nile

FYI The radio interview that Chris took part in on The Launch Hour Business Radio is up and available for listening. Follow the link to the Radio Interview press play and be inspired.

-Nile

A worm, one of the most resilient forms of life on the planet, can have half of its body severed and still survive and thrive enough to grow it back.  The point being that although I like to think of Trident as a much cleaner organism, metaphorically speaking it is quite similar to the worm.  It has been a little over a week with Chris on vacation but that has not stopped the roll and the flow of things around here.  The design team is still hitting their marks, Lisa is still bringing in the business, and Rachael is still making sure everything is on track.  With signs of spring peeking over the horizon, the few nice days we have gotten have been reason enough to break out of the hibernation and start working hard, and that’s exactly what we are doing.   What are we working on these days you might be wondering?  I will say this, there’s never a shortage of kitchen gadgets, but we are venturing into a few new realms and one of our products will be on live display atSXSW this year courtesy of Sonos.  The Powersquid is thriving in its three new habitats, and there are some fun finger puppets in the mix.  We are not named Trident for no reason, we are hard working and serious designers ready to take on any job and prove our abilities.

-Nile

This morning, while walking on the beach in St. Croix with my wife and son, I came across a gentleman, Bruno, making a cool sand castle on the beach in from of his restaurant, Beachside Café, on the beach just outside of Frederiksted, as he does each day they are open. His castle was super cool and his style in making it was cool, too. He made the entire castle using a spade shovel, making quick, confident cuts with the shovel. He had first made a large pile of sand, and then starting cutting it away to reveal the castle, much like a stone sculptor. He started with the overall shape, and then began adding in details with the corner of the edge. He added windows, stairs, towers, and walls, each with a single, quick stroke. I stood and watched him for a while, admiring his work, before I approached him, complimented him, and asked him what his secret was. He replied that there was no secret really, just make each cut with confidence and understand that there are no mistakes. You can’t have final plan in mind, just work with it as it unfolds and don’t try to rework what you’ve already done. You’ll just mess it up. I told him that in fact, I thought his secret was one of the best I’d ever heard.

When I asked him for his secret, he immediately assumed I was looking for his “recipe”, and in since he made it different each day, he didn’t think he had anything to offer. What he did say, though, was much more useful than any series of steps. He gave me the mindset he uses. He gave me a glimpse of his perspective in approaching the project each day. A perspective gained from making hundreds of sand castles. If he had just told me what the actions were, the steps, to creating a sand castle, I would have walked away with a recipe for one castle, and probably not be able to reproduce it well, because I wouldn’t remember all the details. Instead, I feel like I could go out and make an awesome sand castle myself, with any number of possible looks, by applying his mindset of confident strokes, no mistakes, and no master plan, instead a master strategy. Combined with the technique I observed: sculpt by removing material, start big and then add detail, use single strokes, I have the real secret for making awesome sand castles.

Now, let’s take a moment to look at a few of the ways this applies to almost any other activity in life, including, of course, inventing. First, the “secret” to doing something with awesome results is rarely contained within the mere steps to get to the result. We look at people of great accomplishment and we like to ask, “how did they do that?”, “what were the steps they took to get there?”, “what do they know that I don’t know?”. But armed with the answers to these questions, gained by reading accounts of other people’s successes in biographies and magazines, never leads by itself to success. I recently read a detailed history of George Westinghouse during the advent of the electric lighting revolution. Westinghouse invented the pneumatic train brake in his early twenties and started a major corporation to produce them, prior to electrifying the United States. Knowing the steps he took doesn’t get me any closer to being able to make that kind of achievement!

The “secret” to awesome results, of course, is in how you view the world. The perspective that allows someone to see around a corner that no one else can, allows you to see opportunties that no one else can. It is also a certain perspective on the world that allows you to take action on the opportunties you see; a perspective that you can, through will and dedication, cause your vision to come to pass. It is a perspective as well, which allows you to see the correct approach to a task in order to achieve the best results. If someone can share this with you rather than just a series of steps, they are giving you something much more powerful and lasting. It’s the old “give a man a fish” story. It is for this reason I called my eBook “Inventor’s Mind”. Clearly, it is helpful to break things up into steps so information can be logically organized, but what is really important isn’t the actual steps, it is the mindset in approaching each one of them.

The last point I want to make, is that builidng sand castles, is of course, a beautiful metaphor for building our visions, whether an invention, a restaurant, or an insurance brokerage. They are all our dreams, and will ultimatley be washed away by time. What isn’t improtant is that they never wash away, but rather that we have the insight to reproduce a fresh one each time an old one’s time has come. And to get predictably awesome results by having the secret rather than the steps. Also, the specific secrets and techniques that Bruce gave to me apply to almost every endeavor: confident actions, no mistakes, a strategy rather than a plan, sculpt by removing, start big and then add detail, and short precise strokes.

I’m going to the beach now to play in the sand!

-Chris

Apparently all the heat that’s coming out of Trident Design, LLC is having an effect on Columbus, Ohio, because it’s a beautiful sixty degrees right now. Everyone is working hard, hustling and bustling to make things happen. It’s important to remember that in times like these a break can be the best thing for us. A little R&R never hurt anyone, but it’s easy to fall into the mindset that R&R equals laziness, which just isn’t true. It’s important to reward yourself for all of your hard work, whether it’s a nice dinner out on the town with some friends, a movie night at home, or an island getaway. Chris, one of the hardest workers I know, who is quite possibly dealing with the busiest part of his life, is leaving to take eleven days off in St. Croix with his wife and son. Isn’t it nice. There’s no need to fear, the army will thrive without its commander in chief, but the blogs might be a little dry without all the excitement he brings to the table.

-Nile

How do you become a successful inventor? I’m not really sure. It’s definitely an extremely difficult question to answer. There are many variations, many different paths and they don’t all lead to success. In fact, most don’t lead you anywhere or take you on the scenic route. I tend to feel that unless you are extremely gifted or just really lucky you’re usually walking on the scenic route. It’s all part of the process, we all try to walk the line but it always seems easier to stray and only once you’ve strayed too far do you realize you’re going in the wrong direction. If you have the right attitude and the will to push on through you will eventually reach your destination. If you asked Chris this question he would tell you that “there are so many ways to approach success but the most solid and consistent approach is to stay focused and be genuine in your actions. Good marketing is key, but if you provide genuinely good content you will receive long term success.”

Chris has been asked to participate in an interview that will take place on the launch Hour, a weekly radio show for innovators, product developers & entrepreneurs. Hopefully the questions won’t be so deep and will have somewhat more of a straightforward answer; otherwise Chris will probably be sweating it out.   the launch hour podcast will air 2/24/2011.  To be honest Chris is an innovator, product developer, and entrepreneur so I’m sure he will be fine. As well as participating in the radio show/podcast Chris will be offering his knowledge in depth in monthly classes starting in April. Chris has decided to give back to the invention community with a series of informative classes using real world examples from his life and experiences. The intention is to prepare up and coming inventors for the realities of the business as well as encourage them to push as hard as they can.

-Nile

Hello Everyone! Here we are in 2009 and already a month has gone by. I can hardly believe it. This has already been an action-packed year at Trident Design, LLC. It started with our annual journey to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show (The CES), which this year was January 11th-14th. I take several people from my team with me and we have meetings with potential design clients, existing customers for the products we sell ourselves, our sales reps and freinds in the industry. We also cover almost every square foot of the enormous show, checking out all the latest products.

In the CE insdustry, there are actually relatively few “inventions” in a given year. Almost all of what you see are variations on the same major categories. So what you see are TVs, headphones, speakers, cables, game systems, etc. Other industries, like housewares, have much more room for the inventor, since there are many more categories of product. Yet, there are always a few cool things to see at CES. This year I liked the Eye-fi system, these cool globes, and the ClickFree Harddrive. Flexible OLEDs were the technology breakthrough on display, as well as several forms of wireless power.

Regardless of which industry you work in, I definitely recommend going to the CES if you are inventing stuff, because there is lots of great eye-candy of all sorts and plenty to inspire you. The vibe in Vegas is fun for a few days, and there is lots of great design everywhere. If you walk around the Sands Convention Center, where they have the smaller half of the CES, you will see all the smaller companies and their innovative products. I recommend eating out of the strip hotels for superior dining experiences. Origin India is great Indian food (the portions seem small at first and then fill you to bursting!) and the Golden Steer is a true classic steakhouse with

Get to know people! I have been going to CES for 8 years now. Because I keep showing up, I now have lots of friends in the community that gathers around it. People I met one year are now old friends, and as the circle of my industry friends grows, so do the number of opportunities that come Trident’s way. Just introduce yourself and look for opportunties. Everyone there is looking to do business, so you don’t need to be shy about your motivations.