Shouldn’t more money be invested in inventions?

As I was looking through the Forbes list of Billionaires, which includes the usual suspects, such as Carlos Slim, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet. I also noticed that many billionaires inherit there wealth but the most impressive are the self-made billionaires. Some of those include the founders of Facebook and Google but one billionaire in particular, Sara Blakely, the inventor of SPANX caught my attention.

We are so enamored by new technology that it seems like we may have forgotten that inventions for daily use not only can help us in our daily routines, but they can also be very profitable. Inventing a new product can take an inventor years of research and product development, but sometimes an invention is sparked by solving a problem on the spot. People often come up with ideas for an invention but many don’t follow through or they don’t have the means to do so. The potential cost of creating and marketing an invention may seem to be a costly pursuit and the chance to successfully sell the product may be challenging. It is therefore quite impressive that Sara was able to overcome those hurdles to successfully design, create and market a new product with a $5000 budget.

As I was perusing the 2012 Forbes list of billionaires, which includes the usual suspects, such as Carlos Slim, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Many billionaires inherit their wealth but the most impressive are the self-made billionaires. That group includes the founders of Facebook and Google, but one billionaire in particular, Sara Blakely, the inventor of SPANX, caught my attention.

We are so enamored by high tech gadgets that it seems like we may have forgotten that common household inventions for daily use not only help us in our daily routines, but can also produce immense amounts of profit. Inventing a new product can take an inventor years of research and product development, but sometimes an invention comes to fruition immediately. This is what happened to Sara Blakely. It was even more impressive that Ms. Blakely was able to overcome the initial R&D hurdles to successfully design, create and market a new product with an initial $5,000 budget.

The fact that a person today can create a billion dollar fortune based on a common household product should inspire more people to invent household products. Inventing is also a great way to start businesses, which in turn generate jobs – a necessity in this economic environment. Private equity, which already provides seed money to finance new companies should perhaps invest more in new inventions and perhaps the government should set up special investment funds or loans to finance innovation. The government provides funds for infrastructure and to bail out banks, so why not provide funds that will create new jobs?