The mother of invention
Women have traditionally not been among the top inventors in history - mainly because they have not had the wherewithal to get their ideas out there. Now their time has come, says Cally Robson.
New technology means they have the tools to be able to do something with all their ideas.
Cally has been involved in encouraging inventors since 2003. A working mum with a five year old daughter, her background is in product development. She quit the corporate world to become a life coach and develop her idea for an interlocking crockery set – something which could click together and be taken on your travels. Her experience at commercialising her own idea led to her coaching other people with new ideas. She realised something wasn’t happening. “It was difficult for people to put the pieces of the product development puzzle together,” she says. “There was information for conventional business development, but not to help people get help with commercialising their own ideas.”
This sowed the seeds for She’s Ingenious , a new website which aims to provide mentoring, business know-how, networking and other support to women who want to develop and profit from new business ideas.
Coaching
Cally says women have special needs in that they cannot often get to most networking and workshop events if they have children. Most tend to be held at breakfast or in the evenings. She’s Ingenious targets them at midday.
The site posts information and advice which everyone can access and provides one to one coaching, since Cally says every idea is different and will require a different strategy. “It’s good to bounce ideas of someone else. You see things you do not realise you know,” she says. “They will also raise issues you have not considered and be a sounding board.” The coaches also go through a checklist of things inventors need to have considered.
Cally says women inventors differ from their male counterparts in that they tend to watch how people behave and how things happen. “They see where the gaps are in the market since they are the main people behind purchasing decisions. Men tend to approach things slightly differently by coming up with an idea which they think is good,” she says.
She adds that the traditional image of an inventor is a whacky professor-type and almost always male. “Women still do not tend to see themselves as inventors,” she says, “but they are very innovative and they are natural entrepreneurs because they can spot a gap in the market and tend to be good at marketing their ideas as they are often good communicators.”
She thinks the main thing that holds women inventors back is confidence. “They have the feeling that if it is such a good idea won’t someone have already had it. They are almost thinking of reasons why they shouldn’t do anything. It is good to question your ideas, but not to the point that it becomes paralysing,” says Cally. “They also tend to judge themselves too much and to try to anticipate what other people are thinking when very often they are not thinking this at all.”
She says lack of confidence means women tend to do more market research than men. Men are more interested in getting the prototype together and patenting it.
Market research
She adds that market research is vital for developing a new product and says the tools are now at everyone’s fingertips if they need them. A simple Google search can find if there are any similar products. If you can’t find it there, then Cally suggests consulting the British Library’s Business and Intellectual Property Centre which has free resources about companies and trends in the market. You could also try your local library.
“The whole internet set-up is perfect for women,” says Cally. “Men tend to be bigger risk takers and throw money at a project. Women are more cautious and the internet provides the tools they need without them having to pay out lots of money.”
She’s Ingenious sends out tips to its subscribers every two weeks, such as how to write a plan of action and set realisable goals. Cally is very clear that anyone with a business idea needs to see the big picture of where they want to be and how they will get there. If they don’t, women who, for instance, chose to set up their own business so they could balance work and children, can end up overstretching and compromising themselves. Subscribers pay £9.95 a month.
She says that members on the site can be those who choose to develop their ideas full time, but many do it in their spare time alongside a regular job so they can test the waters. Cally adds that in these days of redundancy, people are realising that intellectual property may be more valuable that actual property. She says many people who use the site will be people whose jobs require quite narrow skills and who want an outlet for their creativity. “If you are a creative person, you will want to contribute more. Some people are happy just rolling along, but many will at some point realise that they cannot deny a fundamental part of themselves.”
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