British company Turtle Mat is launching an invitation, open to British residents, to submit inventions for possible commercialisation by them at Project Hatchling. The prize is a negotiated royalty agreement for the successful invention. There is no charge to enter.
Traditionally it is very hard for outsiders to submit their inventions to companies. They are often ignored or treated in a rather offhand fashion. On the competition page, below the video, are images of previous winners. It looks like household products have a good chance, as Turtle Mat is noted for -- surprise -- washable mats, as their website shows.
I have noticed a growing tendency by (some) companies to consider seriously ideas from outside their company. As the head of Procter and Gamble pointed out, most of the world's engineers do not work for his company, so they were missing out on a lot of ideas. They now aim for half of their innovations to be sourced from outside the company.
Submissions are open until the 30 April, and while applications should be made from the 1 April it is possible to preregister.
I retired in April 2013 after 25 years as a librarian at the British Library specialising in inventions. This included running numerous workshops; writing books on inventions and a work blog; carrying out searches for clients; and one-to-one meetings with inventors. [more]
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