The who, when and why of abettermousetrap.co.uk
Peter Bissell (professor of mechanical engineering, UNESCO and World Bank consultant) and Graham Barker (copywriter and escaped English lecturer) first formed a somewhat improbable team in 1983. They were hired to run a pioneering innovation centre set up by a UK local authority specifically to help inventors. It was an instant hit with inventors but commercial returns were slow to materialise – a common dilemma for invention support initiatives. After five years, the centre was deemed too expensive to keep going.
The Bissell-Barker team survived. In 1989 they wrote (because no one else had) and published (because no one else would) the first ever self-help guide to invention, A Better Mousetrap. This became The Business of Invention in 1998 and A Better Mousetrap again in 2007. (Marketing lesson learned: don’t drop a successful name.)
Each title became established as a ‘must read’ for inventors and has been widely used or recommended by patent attorneys, DTI, Business Links, the Welsh Assembly Government’s Wales Innovators Network, and many universities and large companies.
From 2000-2006 the Bissell-Barker team, expanded to include more subject specialists, was the lead external assessor body for NESTA’s Invention & Innovation Programme. The Programme closed in 2006, by which time the team had evaluated over 3000 funding proposals.
In 2004 everything the team did was rebranded as abettermousetrap.co.uk and its invention assessment expertise was for the first time offered directly to private inventors. The aim was to provide inventors with more detailed feedback and practical advice than many companies and funding bodies could realistically give them.
Peter Bissell retired as a partner in March 2008, though he is still a team member.
Looking ahead, abettermousetrap.co.uk would like to help bring about a resurgence of world-beating UK invention. This will primarily have to be through two strategies:
- Education - teaching some people to invent, teaching others to recognise and support good new ideas from often humble sources.
- Realistic support for invention by individuals. We’re in danger of being brainwashed into thinking that ‘innovation’ (the province of large companies and universities) is important but ‘invention’ (the province of individuals) is not. Yet most innovations start with an inventive idea from an individual. Encourage and help inventive individuals and you’ll get more innovation. Ignore, frustrate and impoverish them, and you’ll get less innovation. Blindingly obvious, wouldn’t you say?
|
