The New One

How to envision an invention in 500 words!

Do your friends constantly tease you for your lack of originality? If you answered yes, then you are most likely a plagiarizing slob. Congratulations! You have completed step one of successfully envisioning an invention!

The process of envisioning an invention starts simply with watching sci fi movies—unpopular ones. These are filled with cool looking inventions that need inventing. “But that’s plagiarism!” you may shout. Okay, so then send the following people to jail:

1. Steve Jobs

2. Bill Gates

3. Tim Berners Lee

4. Michael Dell

5. Mike Lazaridis

6. ETC.

I honestly don’t think any of these people did much except watch sci fi as children, perhaps pausing for the occasional game of D & D or Final Fantasy. So if you’re not okay with plagiarism, then maybe building and marketing just aren’t for you.

Okay, so you have your own idea. Now think about it, improve it in your mind. For example, R2D2 is cool, but—what’s this?—R2D2 with an umbrella! R2D2 just got R2D-Pwnd!

Step three is making the invention more you-esque—take away an aspect of it, like R2D2’s being a robot. Now it’s just a cylinder with an umbrella! Still awesome, still original. Steve Jobs, inventor of the iPad, demonstrated this perfectly, taking away the ability to scan, lock on, connect wirelessly with spaceships, and look awesome when he ripped of the “PADD” from Star Trek. He’s simply a brilliant marketer.

Okay, most of the hard stuff is done. Now you just have to come up with a name. I named my R2D2 “The Umbrella Holder”. Look it up online, it’s there. Just like I promised, it holds umbrellas and it’s a cylinder.

If you want a practical name like Martin Cooper’s “Cell Phone” or my “Umbrella Holder” think about your invention. First you take the Subject and the Predicate (What the invention does to the subject) of the invention and tack “er” on to the end. So if your invention crushes puppies, you’ve made a Puppy Crusher. Feeds parrots? Parrot feeder. A handheld device that calls other people? People Caller, or, alternatively, Cell Phone.

But if you want something cooler, like “iPod touch,” (Would you buy a “Things displayer”? Neither would I.) Steve Jobs brilliantly made the iPod more personal with “i”. I mean i’m in there! I want to buy something with me in it! I made a product called “John Smith”, because so many people would say, “That product has my name in it! Let’s buy it!”

Don’t forget: a product is always cooler if you arbitrarily capitalize a few letters. Ipod becomes iPod, making the hate of grammar fun. Mcnuggets becomes McNuggets, making obesity fun. Essay becomes eSsay, making writing fun.

Try it! And do it to your name, like “McDonald”, or “jOe.

Step five: Dream your whole life long that the product could really exist, and tell your friends about it so that they can crush your dreams.

Happy imagining-only-to-find-out-you’re-just-a-dreamer!