Beyond innovation: DaVinci inventors showcase highlights products primed for success.

• Author: Peterson, Eric

Spotlighting everything from tools to make better water balloons to custom geodesic domes, the DaVinci Inventors Showcase was held Nov. 5, 2011, at Noah's, an event center in Westminster. [paragraph] "It was a banner year," said DaVinci Institute founder and event organizer Thomas Frey, citing an attendance of 1,000. And it's gone national: "We e over half of our inventors coming from out of state." As many inventor-oriented events across the country have been in decline in recent years, the DaVinci inventors Showcase is "really going across the grain," he added. [paragraph] "Everyone is talking about innovation," said keynote speaker Louis Foreman, CEO of Edison Nation and publisher of Inventors Digest Foreman noted that a full 50 percent of sales today come from products that are less than five years old. "When a company stops innovating, the clock starts ticking. It's just a matter of time before that company dies."

But that doesn't mean every innovation is a moneymaker. Foreman rattled off "five simple questions" inventors should ask themselves before investing time or money in an idea:

What is your product and what is unique about it?

Who is your customer?

How will the customer react to your product?

How much money will it take?

Where will the money come from?

Not every idea is going to stand up to this battery of questions, he said, but the simple task of honestly answering them can be the difference between success and failure.

Edison Nation (www.edisonnation.com) exists to help push good ideas off of the drawing board and into reality, Foreman said. "What we're trying to do is unleash the potential in great ideas," he said. "It's what I enjoy doing every single day."

INVENTOR OF THE YEAR

Dan Hobson, NeverWet

www.neverwet.com, Lancaster, Pa.

Hobson is CEO of Ross Technology Corp., which supplies harriers and other security products to a host of government customers. Some of these products had trouble with the elements. "We had a corrosion problem," Hobson said.

In 2008, the company's management turned to Dr. Vinod Sikka of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Sikka's solution involved "super hydrophobic" coatings that repelled water. "You can throw mud on it, anything on it, and it stays clean."

It worked wonders fighting corrosion, Hobson said. "We were so impressed we ended up offering him a job." Not only did they hire Sikka away from the lab, they started a whole new division, Ross Nanotechnology Corp., to commercialize...