Outsourcing: Inventors’ Heaven                                               

            Outsourcing is constantly debated in the news these days.  Is it good?  Is it bad?  For the inventor, outsourcing is very good.  
            Our current market environment is much different from the environment five or 10 years ago.  There has been a major market trend toward specialization.  The mega-corporations are becoming a thing of the past and highly specialized companies are starting to dominate the market.  But how does this help the inventor?
            Specialized companies do one aspect of a business and look for other companies to do the rest.  For instance, a company might specialize in distributing naturally made home remedies.  They would have no research and development department and no manufacturing capabilities, but they would always be on the look out for new products to sell that someone else is manufacturing.  Previously, corporations developed, manufactured and sold their own products, but our new environment operates using three-way agreements between a marketer, a manufacturer and a research and development firm.  By using partnership agreements, buy-and-sell contracts or a combination of the two, these three company operations supply the market with many of the hot new products.  As an inventor, you can fill the role of the research development firm and simply outsource the rest of the work to other companies.
            But is that all the good that comes out of this new outsourcing environment?  Not at all.  Perhaps the best part of outsourcing is that companies are now used to forming partnerships and even looking for them.  Partnerships can be a big advantage to both marketers and manufacturers.  For the marketer, being in a partnership gives them input and some control over the product idea.  Most marketers feel that they know what the market wants and sometimes they want to adjust products to match their perception of the consumers’ desires; being a partner allows them to do just that.  Manufacturers are in a much different situation.  If manufacturers just contract production, they realize they could lose the product at any time, which would be a loss of revenue.  On the other hand, if they feel that the product could be successful, they might want to be a partner just to guarantee the rights of production.  
            The advantages of pooling resources to exploit market opportunities has marketers and manufacturers looking for partnerships to advance their business.  That eagerness is what is so advantageous for the inventor.  In order to enter into a partnership, all parties must offer concessions.  For the inventor the main concession is loss of control over part of the project.  But this can be a minor consideration if in return the manufacturer and marketer make most of the major investments in the project.  For instance, the manufacturer might pay for all of the tooling and prototyping work or invest in any necessary equipment for production.  This creates a situation where an inventor is able to introduce his/her own idea with little or no investment and also little or no risk!
            Partnership agreements can be very difficult to set up and finding potential partners can be even more difficult, but today’s market environment has never been friendlier to inventors.  Now is the time to try to introduce your great new idea, especially if you can do it with low to no risk.