American Inventor Revisited

I watched several episodes of the reality show “American Inventor.” As it progressed I realized that the goings-on had a strong resemblance to the invention that occurs every year in the concrete industry.

On the show, a panel of judges evaluates new devices brought forward by their inventors. The panel accepts the inventions they consider most promising, and their inventors get time and money to refine their creations. After the refinements the inventions come back for a re-evaluation and another winnowing down to the best candidates.

Ultimately a winner is crowned. The inventor gets exposure and resources to help him on his way to signing a big deal to commercialize the invention. But of course the runners-up have also received some exposure and assistance already, and this has also given them a better shot at hitting commercial success.

The resemblance of this to our industry struck me as I walked the aisles at World of Concrete. Dozens of inventions, with their inventors, competed for our attention. Some seemed like solid ideas, some were wildly clever, some were questionable, and some I judged to be simply a waste of time.

I saw concrete blocks pre-installed with a beautiful veneer of natural stone. I saw form systems with plastic panels, simple clips that connect 2x lumber to create formwork for concrete steps, and a rapid cutoff cleaver for manufactured stone. I saw an insulated stay-in-place edge form for concrete slabs,

I know from experience that a lot of these won’t make the next cut. Their inventors will struggle without sales, and eventually give up for lack of funds. Some will get some sales, but won’t make the second cut. Instead they will plateau at low-volume sales. But others will grow significantly for years, repaying their inventors and benefiting the construction industry.

But to me the most interesting aspect of all of this is how little the success of a product has to do with how good an invention it is. I have watched new products come and go for fifteen years. Most of the best ones released to the market back then are now gone. A few that looked pretty minor are still around, and some of those are thriving.

How can this be? First I have to point out that few of the really terrible ones survived. In fact, I can’t think of a one that has. But among the others—the OK ones, the good ones, and the impressively clever ones—there is no clear-cut pattern. A lot of the most impressive ones fail and some of the apparently so-so ones go on to success.

Many great ones flop simply because their inventors were no good at marketing. If you have a better mouse trap, the world will not beat a path to your door. In reality, you have to beat the world to get it to notice, no matter how good the product is. And that takes skill and marketing know-how that few people have.

Many are technically clever, but really not suitable for the market. They are done in by a fatal flaw—they are too hard to understand, they require too much adjustment by the construction crews, manufacturers cannot make money from them so there is no one to produce them, or the suitable distributors are already in agreements to sell competing products so there is no good way to sell them. There are plenty of potential problems that have nothing to do with how well the product does its own job at the site.

Conversely, some products that seem like minor advances have an inventor who knows how to get marketing help that can shepherd the invention through all the obstacles of training crews, finding manufacturers, securing distributors, and all the rest.

So every year we get a few more winners and we see once again that the concrete industry is a real-life episode of American Inventor.

Next issue: Window on the future.