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Phew... There is so much to do to get a business online these days. There's Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Google+, Google Maps, LinkedIn, websites (weinventit.com), emails, ect. ect. It get's a little crazy, but it's worth the effort.

It's nice to take a little breather and just talk to you, right now.

Today, we want to talk about the two approaches to finding invention ideas and why one tends to work better than the other.

The first way is to start with a great idea or technology and see if you can find something useful to do with it. This is very tempting, but it's a trap.

The second way is to notice a problem and attempt to find a solution, the better method.

The difference is subtle, but significant. What happens with the first method is that the idea looks really cool (!), but doesn't actually make a significant improvement in people's lives. (Think Segway or flying car.) However, when you start with a problem that you already know is bothersome or a demand that you already know exists, it just becomes a matter of finding a good solution.

With the problem based approach, the idea may fail at the prototype stage if it doesn't work. With the technology based approach, the idea may go all the way to market, after millions of dollars, before people realize the demand just isn't there.

Obviously, both ways can work, but it just seems to work better when you look for solutions instead of problems.