If you’re an inventor or a small R&D team lead, you’ve probably felt the same friction point again and again:

• You’ve got a real innovation.
• You can explain it.
• You can defend it technically.
• You may even have protection in place.

And yet the project keeps stalling at the same place:

“We just need the right investor.”

“We just need someone to back us.”

“We cant seem to get our first commercial deal”

That belief is understandable — but it’s also the reason so many strong projects don’t get momentum.

Because most early-stage projects don’t fail due to lack of innovation.

They fail because the team never solves the WHO.

Not the “who might invest if we pitch hard enough.”

The “who already has what we need — and can say yes because it strengthens their position.”

That is a completely different game.

And it’s the focus of my free live webinar on Tuesday January 27th 7:00 PM NYC time, and Wednesday 28 January 2026, In Australia and also in UK at 8:00am GMT. (choose the sessi...

Recently, someone asked me in one of my innovation groups, “What do you actually do for inventors?”

I realised that—even though I constantly share tips, insights, and processes— I had never explained the full scope of what I actually do, and why this work radically changes an inventor’s commercial trajectory within months… sometimes even weeks.

So let me explain it clearly and practically.

The Core of My Work: Turning Ideas Into Income Within 3–6 Months

I show inventors how to turn their ideas into commercial opportunities, and then I work with them to achieve their first significant cash-generating transaction.

Not a small sale.

Not a “let’s test this on Etsy and see what happens.”

I’m talking about:

• A distribution agreement
• A licensing deal
• A capital raise
• Or selling the idea outright A distribution agreement
• A licensing deal
• A capital raise
• Or selling the idea outright

In many cases, we secure more than one of these milestones—often with the same commercial partne...

After working with inventors for more than four decades, I have noticed a pattern that appears so consistently it is difficult to ignore. Most inventors never generate meaningful income from their inventions.

Yet a small minority do.

The difference between these two groups is rarely intelligence, creativity, or engineering ability. Many inventors whose projects never succeed are extraordinarily talented. Instead, the difference lies in something far less visible. It lies in how the invention is commercialized.

The 95% Reality

The majority of inventors approach commercialization in a way that seems logical but ultimately leads them into a difficult cycle. First, they build the invention. Then they refine it. Then they refine it again. Eventually they begin looking for investors who might fund the project.

Months pass. Sometimes years.

But the project rarely moves forward. The inventor may become frustrated, believing that the market simply does not understand the value of the idea...

For many years, I have watched inventors, founders, researchers, and small innovation teams make the same painful mistakes again and again. Some rush too early. Some overprotect too soon. Some pitch for money before they can explain how the project will actually make money. Some obsess over product features while ignoring the business model that must carry the project into the market. That repeated pattern is exactly why I built and refined the six-step framework

I set out in Billion Dollar Napkin and across my later work on intellectual property commercialisation. I did not build it as a neat academic model to look good on a whiteboard. I built it because too many promising innovations were dying in the gap between invention and income.

The six steps are not random milestones. They reflect the real progression I have seen across decades of projects: (1) Ideation and Commercial Modelling, (2) Ownership and Protection, (3) Funding, (4) Transitioning, (5) Project Scaling, and (6) the E...

For more than four decades, I have worked with inventors, founders, researchers, and innovation teams trying to answer one deceptively simple question: How do I turn this invention into income?

It is a fair question. It is also the point at which many otherwise intelligent, capable inventors begin to drift into the most expensive part of the journey. Not because they lack creativity. Not because the invention is weak. But because commercialisation is a different discipline from invention, and too many people try to do it alone, on instinct, while learning the rules mid-stream.

I understand the temptation to commercialise your invention yourself. At first glance, it seems sensible. You know the product better than anyone. You have lived with the problem. You have spent the late nights, the weekends, the prototypes, the conversations, and, in many cases, a painful amount of your own money. It is only natural to think that if you just push a little harder, protect it a little better, re...