The entrepreneurial mindset is for everyone, from aspiring inventors to corporate managers. Richard Cahoon, a professor at the Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, explains how we can combine the creative and analytical parts of our minds—the right brain and left brain—to give our ideas life and longevity.
Inventions can make day-to-day life easier or revolutionize industries. However, most novel ideas wither on the vine. In this episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell, professor Richard Cahoon from the global development department at the Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences joins host Chris Wofford to discuss how creativity can shift a good idea that might be a flash in the pan to a great idea that stands the test of time.
Key Timestamps
Relevant eCornell Programs
Learn more in Cahoon’s Invention and IP Management online certificate program and these technology, leadership and business programs from eCornell:
Reading List and Resources
Did you enjoy this episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast? Watch the Keynote.
Chris Wofford: Welcome to Cornell Keynotes. I'm Chris Wofford. On today's show, we learn how to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and why it's so critical for invention and innovation. For this, I'm joined by Professor Dick Cahoon from the Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Dick and I discuss how to integrate the creative and analytical parts of our minds, what some people call the left brain and right brain to bring our ideas to life and see them blossom.
Chris Wofford: This is not only inspirational, but actually practical stuff that can help you level up as an entrepreneur and intrapreneur or innovator. Be sure to check the episode notes for details on eCornell's Invention and IP Management Online Certificate Program authored by Professor Cahoon. Dick also provides a really useful reading list to get your mind in the entrepreneurial mindset.
Chris Wofford: Listeners, here's my conversation with Dick Cahoon.
Chris Wofford: Dick, great to have you back in the studio. It's been six years.
Richard Cahoon: It's been, has it been that long? Yeah, I'm a little bit older. It's really delightful to be back. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Wofford: Lovely to have you. Professor Cahoon is also faculty author of the eCornell Certificate Program called Invention and Intellectual Property Management.
Chris Wofford: A lot of what we're going to be talking about today is covered much more thoroughly and densely in his online courses. So we'll share the URL for those of you that are interested in learning more about what we're going to be speaking about today, a couple of notes to our viewers. While this discussion is primarily for those of you that work with inventors, like Dick told me, and not necessarily for inventors, I suspect Dick, that a lot of what we covered today could also benefit inventors.
Chris Wofford: Like our title is the entrepreneurial mindset, I imagine that drew a number of entrepreneurs, and I'm certain a good deal of what we talk about can apply universally across all these disciplines. Yeah?
Richard Cahoon: Absolutely. No question about it, Chris, because there is one thing that I would say practically 99 percent of all inventors want is to see their inventions turned into reality.
Richard Cahoon: And that's a lot of what this is about.
Chris Wofford: Good. Before we dig into mindset, Dick, however, I think our viewers should understand a little bit about who you are, what you do. You were director of Cornell's Technology Transfer Office for 20 years. And now you do work with the U. S. Departments of Commerce and State, also United Nations agency.
Chris Wofford: Tell us about your work because, like I told you before the show, technology transfer was actually something I didn't know about before having met you six years ago.
Richard Cahoon: Yeah, I didn't know anything about it either until I guess the mid nineties. Uh, basically tech transfer is that process that's now really been woven into a lot of universities' missions, and what it is, is capturing inventions made by faculty and staff and even students and capturing them with intellectual property, typically patents, so that provides a handy mechanism for partnering with the private sector.
Richard Cahoon: To realize that invention being turned into something, a new product, a new service, a new company even. It's something that was started, most people look to 1980 when the process got going with the change of a national law called the Bayh-Dole Act. And now every university in the U.S. pretty much is engaged in it and more and more around the world we're seeing people really realizing that this is something that they should tap into for the better, you know, the benefit of their society.
Chris Wofford: Why do you think mindset is so critical to being a successful entrepreneur, or entrepreneur?
Richard Cahoon: Yeah, well, I've been doing this for now almost 45 years.
Richard Cahoon: I am an inventor. I have a patent in my name and an entrepreneur and really decades of the evolution of my thinking and observation, not only of myself, but but also of colleagues and people that I've mentored and many, inventors at Cornell and elsewhere. It's something that now I almost take for granted that the difference between pretty good and great is this attitude, the attributes of thinking that people bring to an activity.
Richard Cahoon: It isn't so much the actual skill or knowledge that's important and essential, but it's that, that extra mmm, soft skills, some people call it, or these attitudes that, whenever I see somebody who's really an achiever or doing really great work, I realize that it's because they exhibit these mindset attributes.
Chris Wofford: I see you light up when we talk about creativity and its role within this. Um, there's a misconception that creativity sort of ends with the act of invention, you submit otherwise. You say that's that's actually a jumping off point for further creative opportunities. Tell me what you're talking about
Richard Cahoon: Well, you know, I remember reading years ago about the statistics of patents and how few of them were ever realized into something uh, you know, new product or service or a company that most inventions kind of wither on the vine.
Richard Cahoon: And uh, well it's because and I've been doing this now for decades where I work with inventors and inventions to take them from the point at which the inventor says, okay, I've invented. To take it from that point and then move it through the phases of validation, of thinking about where it's, where it fits in the world.
Richard Cahoon: What is the invention anyway? That is a really creative process and the more and more that I've done it over the years, I can now point to many inventions where I say, you know, the invention that I was handed by the inventor is almost nothing like what we ended up with.
Chris Wofford: We're solving a whole new problem sometimes.
Richard Cahoon: Totally, totally new problem. And I frequently get inventors look at me and go, I'd never really thought about it that way. And we've brought in a new application, a new attribute, a whole new approach oftentimes.
Chris Wofford: What is the case that you're making for this mindset? Maybe you can get a little bit more into what it actually is, right? So how do you approach this with your students?
Richard Cahoon: Well, one of the first things I always I ask them about it, you know, do they understand the left brain and the right brain and, you know, that there are these different ways of thinking and uh, some are aware of it and many aren't.
Richard Cahoon: But one of the things that pops up pretty quickly is this idea of actually thinking about your thinking. The psychologists call it metacognition, which is this ability to understand how you think and to step back from your own thinking and go, Oh, I can see my analytical proclivities here and that maybe my creativity side maybe it's not as developed.
Richard Cahoon: And so with my students, I'll say, okay, let's talk about your creative side. And most of the students that I get in my course are technical based, science and engineering. So I'll ask them uh, well, Does anybody play music? Does anybody like music? Anybody paint? Does anybody do sculpture? Does anybody do things?
Chris Wofford: Generative creation.
Richard Cahoon: More creation, just thinking outside the box, that sort of thing. So that stimulates a lot of dialogue and thinking.
Chris Wofford: So you've been doing this for decades. Did you learn anything about mindset? Did you have anything that guided the way that you've ended up here. Who did you learn from?
Richard Cahoon: No, that was, so it's been uh, just a self discovery process.
Richard Cahoon: I didn't understand any of this. It just happened as I, I was a, I was interested in doing things, so I was always doing, learning, and so through experience I developed you know, through trial and error. I would say the first step for me was I took a course after I got my undergraduate degree, I took a course in efficient reading.
Richard Cahoon: Which actually did teach me how to read faster, but it did something else. It taught me how to learn and it taught me how to think about my thinking. And that was really the launch of like, Oh, my brain can work in different ways. And so I started to think about it, and these days I think about my mind like I think about a fine instrument.
Richard Cahoon: I think of it like a Stradivarius, you know, like it's a beautiful thing. It's the tool we use. What can I do to tune it? What can I do to get the best music out of it?
Chris Wofford: Sure. Tell me about this concept inventiveness analysis. What is this process?
Chris Wofford: This is something that's part of your courses. By the way, you can teach this.
Richard Cahoon: I can teach that in fact I have a tool in the course. We actually have a tool that I developed called the inventiveness analysis tool. It's something that patent lawyers are familiar with in terms of understanding what part of an invention is patentable.
Richard Cahoon: So, to be an invention it has to be this, something created. It has to be beyond just an idea. It has to be something that's been elaborated in some form, usually writing or in some kind of visual way.
Chris Wofford: The prototype, are we even pre prototype at this point?
Richard Cahoon: Or even pre prototype. I mean, it could just be data.
Richard Cahoon: A lot of inventions, of course, are, you know, molecular. So, you know, it's data, primarily, but the first step is to go, Well, what is the invention? And this is it sounds simple, but just describing the invention when you work with an inventor and say, well, let's describe it. They oftentimes don't describe it very well.
Richard Cahoon: Oftentimes the more technically dense, the less capable inventors are of describing it. Well, sometimes they'll describe it too with too many words. And sometimes with the wrong words or with acronyms and so on. So you have to define exactly what it is. And then you do what we call a prior art search, which is you look for, see an invention to be inventive has to be completely unique.
Richard Cahoon: And that means you've got to search the databases of the world and patents and technical literature to see if it is in fact unique. And when you dive into these features of an invention and compare it to the prior art, things start to happen. You realize that the invention, maybe parts of it aren't unique, because the prior art has already shown that.
Richard Cahoon: And that means it's not inventive. But then you find there are things that yes, in fact, are unique, but the invention as originally thought of by the inventor begins to evolve because the prior art kind of configures it. So you get this changing. Now the other thing that will happen and this is something that inventors really appreciate when someone like me comes in, I'm not an inventor, and I never pretend to be the inventor.
Richard Cahoon: I wouldn't barge in like that, I'm there to help them. But I'll say, for example um, your invention you invented it to solve this problem in foods, but I don't understand why it couldn't be useful in paints. And they go, Oh, I never thought of that. So what happens is what I call lateral inventiveness, where an invention made by an inventor to solve one problem, you realize, Oh, it could be applied over here.
Richard Cahoon: So that's one of the areas of expansion that can happen through this inventiveness analysis.
Chris Wofford: Post-it Notes was an example where it wasn't supposed to be about a Post-it Note. Yeah. What happened there?
Richard Cahoon: The Post-it Note actually was a failed, I have one here, just to remind me of such things.
Richard Cahoon: The Post-it Note was a failed, it was invented at 3M by a chemist who was trying to come up with a new adhesive and he, I actually met the fellow at one point, he failed because it doesn't stick very well. Yeah, and that therein lies yet another form of creativity, which is the failure of an invention in one way turns out to be a positive in a different application.
Chris Wofford: That's right. Yeah, it sticks just enough. It doesn't leave residue when you take it off.
Richard Cahoon: In a lot of ways it's beautiful, but you know, if you were searching for a really permanent and good adhesive, this is a failure, but that's where you've got to step back and use that right side of your brain to go, oh, but wait a minute.
Richard Cahoon: Wait a minute. Maybe those other attributes aren't a failure in another application. That's what, that's the level of creativity that I'm talking about. That never ceases to amaze me how much value we as non inventors, but inventor enablers or helpers can provide.
Chris Wofford: So, tell me if inventiveness analysis works for just the same in entrepreneurial endeavors, intrapreneurial endeavors. Tell me a little bit about this may apply to those entrepreneurs in our audience who may not be inventing a patentable brand new thing.
Richard Cahoon: Well, so, this process of, you know, first of all, using both sides of your brain on a problem, every entrepreneur, you know, you have a problem that you're trying to solve.
Richard Cahoon: The problem is usually how do you bring a product or service to the market? And so you're trying to solve a problem. How do you do it? You know, almost always you've got limited resources. Now intrapreneurs are within companies they're like entrepreneurs, they're trying to do the same thing where they're taking a new thing, presuming they have an invention, both the entrepreneur and the intrapreneur will have an invention and they're, they're asking the question, how do I take it from where it is now to a preferred outcome, the start of the company, the sale of a product, the sale of a service.
Richard Cahoon: So, the problem solving, and this is probably where it doesn't really matter, a lot of the things that I've learned over the years are applicable in many different fields, and there's a set of things that I continually have to remind myself about mindset. That I think are really good prescriptions for ultimate success in this entrepreneurial, intrapreneurial domain.
Richard Cahoon: So, for example, and I say this to myself all the time is, and this is something that I have to tell my, my students frequently especially younger folks with a lot of energy and analytical thinkers is, don't analyze too soon. Don't jump to conclusions. And boy you know, I've been guilty of doing that, you know, like I want to just leap to a decision right away.
Richard Cahoon: I want to leap to an answer. It's satisfying, and yet, something happens that isn't optimal when you do that. You want to just, the way I think of it is, you don't try to solve a problem initially, just live with it. Just live with it for a while.
Chris Wofford: Yeah. Another concept I want you to tell me about, you had mentioned this concept of intellectual lenses. How does that compare to what we have just been talking about? What are you getting at with intellectual lenses?
Richard Cahoon: So, I realize, and this is again uh, the benefit of uh, a lot of experiences working with, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of inventions and inventors and my own startup and so on.
Richard Cahoon: And that is, over time you realize that there you're, you're using the same thought process over and over and over. And so maybe what you ought to do is develop a tool or a template or some way that you ultimately learn helps you understand, helps you get insight. So it hit me one day when I realized that of course, like any lens, you know, when you have a lens, like this type, you don't see so well, and when you put the lens on, suddenly everything becomes clear.
Richard Cahoon: And so I realized that there were certain things that I was using, certain tools, certain approaches, that had this intellectual lens effect, which if you use them, then things become clear. So the inventiveness analysis tool is one, that's one where if you take any invention and you plug it in there, it's a lens that tells you something about this invention.
Richard Cahoon: And another one that I really like is in this domain of implementation and commercialization of new technology is the value proposition. That's a term that entrepreneurs like to use, investors use, which is um, what are the, the value proposition is the benefits minus the cost.
Richard Cahoon: Very simple. But forcing yourself to describe that is this lens that really makes everything get very clear.
Chris Wofford: This was something that I was kind of wondering about: mindset can't be that beneficial if it exists in a vacuum, right? You've got, maybe it does just serve the individual and that's how this whole thing kind of works. But how does my mindset figure into a team type of thing? Especially when we're inventing something, we've got a small group together.
Richard Cahoon: Right.
Chris Wofford: How do you get everybody dialed into a mindset?
Richard Cahoon: Good question. Good question, because it's not a straightforward answer. I mean, any invention that I've ever been involved in that has become successful is successful because there are partners, there's teams, there's interactive collaboration, the inventors working with the, you know, the entrepreneur who's working with the investors, who's working with the marketing people, all those participants need to work together in a collaborative way.
Richard Cahoon: I think first of all, it's important that the individual entrepreneur, tech manager, invention manager have a certain set of inherent personal attributes, the mindset of themselves, like, for example, you got to keep your ego in check, right? This is uh, and you know, if you keep your ego in check, you know, you don't get unraveled when people critique your work, for example, or they tell you that you're wrong.
Richard Cahoon: You know, you need to work on things like your own resilience, your own emotional intelligence, your own optimism. There's certain things that we I believe that we can focus on in ourselves that make us a good team member. And then beyond that, it's like, yes, you've got to respect other people. You've really got to appreciate the fact that you need others.
Richard Cahoon: And you've got to respect their opinions and enjoy the process of collaboration and also the, some people call it the, even the intellectual friction because that happens. And uh, so you want to be ready for that and uh, enjoy the process. I also am a big believer in you and I were talking about this earlier.
Richard Cahoon: The sense of humor, I think to me, one of the reasons that I've been successful is that I have a sense of humor and I know when and how to use it. And it's an extremely powerful tool. It makes things more enjoyable and the team work's better.
Chris Wofford: Yeah, speaking of the team working better, viewers have submitted some questions.
Chris Wofford: Let's take a couple if you don't mind. I have one here from Navjot or Navjot Sandhu who asks: Where can inventors, entrepreneurs get support for projects that aren't going to give venture capitalists that really large payback? But do take significant initial capital. Any advice there? That's the eternal question.
Richard Cahoon: That's a, I wish I had the quick answer. It's always a good one. You know, you have to be persistent. You have to ask for help. You have to look around and ask for help. I have always appreciated what we call angel investors, angel investors are people who invest in entrepreneurs and inventions and inventors because it's the right thing to do, not because they think they're gonna make a huge profit right away. So you got to look for those people.
Richard Cahoon: I think networking is probably the best thing one could do. I don't know where the questioner is, but you know, if you, in your community, I'll use an example here at Cornell, when in Ithaca, when we were trying to get an entrepreneurial ecosystem going and find investors, I went to the Rotary Club and made presentations and met a guy who was a car dealer and he stepped up and said, well, this is very interesting.
Richard Cahoon: Can I help the community by being an investor? And that led to something called the Cayuga Venture Fund.
Chris Wofford: Oh, yeah, sure.
Richard Cahoon: Yeah.
Chris Wofford: Still around. Still around. So always be ready with your elevator pitch. Be ready to go, right? Because you never know when you're going to turn.
Richard Cahoon: Absolutely right.
Chris Wofford: What other attributes serve us well when I'm thinking about inventiveness analysis?
Chris Wofford: That's learning how to do a thing. But also, you know, viewing things through intellectual lenses, creativity, curiosity, open mindedness. What are some of the other things that you teach, like, within your courses? Sure. Other attributes that would benefit our viewers?
Richard Cahoon: Connecting the dots. And we talk a lot about connecting the dots, right? And I encourage my students to connect the dots.
Chris Wofford: What do you mean by that?
Richard Cahoon: Well, so you're looking for relationships, you're looking for patterns and when you start getting pretty good at that, you know, you start, and you'll make some connections that make no sense. But that's okay because you learn over time that sometimes you have to make connections that in hindsight turn out not to be great, but they also led you somewhere.
Richard Cahoon: But here's the thing about connecting the dots. Before you can connect the dots, you have to collect the dots. So this is one of the things I tell my students. Look, you can't just connect dots until you start to have the dots. And so that means you go out there and you kind of live with the problem, you gather information.
Richard Cahoon: You're open minded to serendipity. Serendipity is that just happenstance. You didn't, you weren't even expecting it. That's one of the nice things about working in this field of invention where, you know, thinking outside the box can come in very handy, and so you allow your mind to be a more open minded to like... oh another thing I would say is there's a big role for your subconscious, and that is that's why one of the reasons I say don't try to analyze things too heavily initially. Just put things in there put information in don't try to solve it.
Richard Cahoon: Don't try to come up with the solution. Just put it in your consciousness your subconscious, or higher conscious, whatever terms you want to use, will generate solutions for you and for me they come out when i'm not even expecting it when i'm running in the morning, when i'm cooking.
Chris Wofford: Yeah, you gotta be ready to go.
Richard Cahoon: When I'm chopping the carrot and all of a sudden I get that inspiration.
Chris Wofford: It's the best, isn't it?
Richard Cahoon: I love it. Yeah.
Chris Wofford: Dick's reading list. You've recommended a few books to us. A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. What's that about? Why would our viewers read this?
Richard Cahoon: I think that's a good one to give a little more context about this.
Richard Cahoon: You know the idea that if you can rely upon both hemispheres can look at your own thinking and go, you know, gosh, I'm really heavy on the creative side. Maybe I could develop a little bit on the analytical side. How do you do that? And he's got some techniques for stimulating that balance.
Richard Cahoon: That's a good one. And then I really like this Power of Mindfulness. It is one of the things that I rely upon. I did say earlier that this is this fine instrument, I consider it like a Stradivarius and I take care of my instrument and that means I do a little meditation and this book on mindfulness was given to me in Sri Lanka.
Richard Cahoon: It's short, but it's got some really great advice in terms of, you know, how to treat your mind in terms of the way you I like concentration and free flowing thinking. So these are some of the ways to tune your mind so that you're really ready to go when you get a real problem that you're going to try to solve, like turning an invention into something real.
Chris Wofford: What about Carol Dweck's mindset? What's that one about?
Richard Cahoon: That's um, I think now a lot more people are aware of Dweck's work, a psychologist who studied success you know, in people and one of the take homes for her, and she writes about it, is this idea of the growth mindset and the growth mindset as opposed to the fixed mindset.
Richard Cahoon: The growth mindset says, and I'd like this quote, I use it in my class and I say that the fixed mindset says, well, I can't do that. Whereas the growth mindset says, I wonder how I'm going to do that. So, you fight the fear of failure, you don't mind mistake. You are willing to try things. You understand that evolution of your thinking is preferred over perfectionism.
Richard Cahoon: Someone once said perfectionism is the enemy of the possible. And these are some of the things that I think you have to keep in your mind as you are, and this applies to any field really. Maybe not brain surgery. You probably should be pretty good at that when you dive into someone's brain.
Richard Cahoon: But for the most part, in most endeavors, I think to being willing to do things and fail and make some mistakes is part of the pathway.
Chris Wofford: Hey, I want to talk about a particular tactical or strategic juncture in the process. Bria asks, this is a good question: When do you know that you've figured out your target audience or your niche for your innovation?
Chris Wofford: Is that something you should continually revisit? I don't know. Help us through that one.
Richard Cahoon: The target audience.
Chris Wofford: How do you validate your assumptions, your customer discovery kind of stuff? Coming up with you know, user profiles, et cetera.
Richard Cahoon: So that's an interesting question.
Chris Wofford: Is that beyond the scope of your purview?
Richard Cahoon: Well, gosh I'm always challenging myself to, you know, and in this world of invention and there are so many different, types of inventions that I've worked on, and that means different marketplaces different kinds of technologies. What pops into my head right now is just to say, I try always to challenge my own thinking and never be in a cocoon.
Richard Cahoon: And I'm always telling people, you know, look, you might think this is where you're, you got to control your ego. You may think you know the answers. You may think you know your customers. No, you got to get out and talk to people.
Chris Wofford: Yeah.
Richard Cahoon: And more and more. I'm, you know, I'm finding gosh, I probably didn't listen enough in my, in my earlier years.
Richard Cahoon: In fact, maybe last month I wasn't really listening enough. I need to listen more, need to listen more. That's a really good uh, that's a really good skill.
Chris Wofford: You know, maybe one other thing too, is to go where the data takes you, right? So what do you know about your existing customers? We are awash in data.
Chris Wofford: It's got to be able to help you out.
Richard Cahoon: Oh, I, sure. I mean, I'm a big, I'm a big lover of data and uh, I love science and engineering. I rely upon it heavily, certainly, but that said, I also, you know, this is where, you know, having a little bit of stepping back and looking at big picture and understanding what the data really says and just getting out there and talking to people.
Richard Cahoon: I can't overstate the importance of, and I see this a lot with inventors. Especially in universities, we see people talk about reality like they know it really well and yet you ask them, well, have you ever talked to somebody who flies a plane? Well, let's go talk to them. You're almost always surprised by some things that you didn't know.
Chris Wofford: A couple of questions, tough to choose, but I'm going to pick one from Ehsan here who asks: In what ways can an inventor's mindset around collaboration and open mindedness, I think what Ehsan's getting at is uh, getting more people involved in your innovation or your invention, can it actually dilute the quality or, the originality of the idea?
Chris Wofford: Is this a dynamic that you see?
Richard Cahoon: That I see um,
Chris Wofford: Groupthink.
Richard Cahoon: I would say, well, I probably wouldn't put it as dilution.
Chris Wofford: That was my word.
Richard Cahoon: Okay, I would say, can you get distracted, can multiple voices like, well, we say too many cooks in the kitchen.
Chris Wofford: That's exactly what the question is.
Richard Cahoon: That absolutely can happen. Yeah, sure. And I think this is one of the challenges for an intrapreneurs in particular, because intrapreneurs will come up with the, you know, there's an invention over here in this department and they bring it to the process and then, invariably, there are people who for whatever reason are negative, negativity is a common theme within organizations.
Richard Cahoon: And for whatever reason, in fact, when I've had companies ask me, CEOs of companies, would you please analyze our company and tell me how we can be more innovative. And I have to come back to them and go, you need to hire different people. Either that or the people there need to really be retrained in terms of the way they think.
Richard Cahoon: So, you know, yes, you absolutely can go into team efforts that are going to do nothing but derail. That is true.
Chris Wofford: I'm going to take Ehsan's other question because I think it's nice. What are some common mental blocks or limiting beliefs that can hinder the inventive process? Maybe common pitfalls that we all experience as human beings. Yeah. What do you see?
Richard Cahoon: Well, fear, anxiety you know, fear of being wrong.
Richard Cahoon: Fear of failure, fear of looking silly. One of the things that now I take for granted is that when I work with inventors and it's easy now because I look like a professor and you know, like I've got enough years behind me. But when I was younger, I would go and talk to world class scientists and you know, there's that tendency to think, Oh, well, gosh I'm afraid to look like an amateur and now I just don't have that at all.
Richard Cahoon: I delight in going into a situation and go, I don't know anything about this. Teach me. And so I think that's one of the pitfalls is that we're afraid to look silly or not smart enough. And so that's, that's one, as I said, you know, that's where I think our ego gets, but on the other hand, you need to have a certain level of self confidence.
Richard Cahoon: And I always, I think compassion I've learned over the years, the more, the older I get, the more compassionate I feel for people, for organizations, the planet, et cetera. And part of the compassion should be directed to yourself. You know, you should say, Hey, I'm not perfect, but that, but hey, that's great.
Richard Cahoon: And so, enjoy life. And that's also where I think you know, have a little sense of humor even laugh at yourself a little bit.
Chris Wofford: You have to. You have to. Somebody that can't laugh at themselves, what kind of dinner guest are they going to turn out to be?
Richard Cahoon: Exactly.
Chris Wofford: Okay. A couple of notifications here. So earlier on, Dick, you had mentioned a couple of tools that we can use, available to anybody.
Chris Wofford: Google Patents, US Patent Resources. We dropped the URLs in the chat here. Any comments or notes on how we can use these resources smartly without wasting a bunch of time or spinning our wheels?
Richard Cahoon: Well, so those tools are essential for doing what we call prior art search. Prior art is that necessary task that we have to search for patents, like Google Patents is great because it's worldwide and it's free.
Richard Cahoon: And you need to find those patents that are as similar to the invention that you're analyzing and that's when the process really gets started. So it's free. But it involves searching databases, and I'm no specialist in it, and I don't claim to be. So, I'm always open minded to find people who can help me.
Richard Cahoon: Librarians. You know, librarians, whether they're in the public library or in a university library, look for librarians and ask them for help. They're happy to help you, right? And they'll say, sure, let's sit down and do a search. And so, those are some free and available resources that I'd recommend.
Chris Wofford: Good. So in addition to mindset and everything that we've covered today, can you tell me a little bit more about what the student in your Invention and IP Management Certificate Program will learn. So, everybody that's here, knowing everything they've just learned, where will that set of courses take them?
Richard Cahoon: The certificate program, the full program is six modules. And it goes in a logical, sequential way, from initially having an invention, analyzing it, separating out inventions from just ideas. And again, this, it's designed for those who are inventors themselves but also people who are helping inventors, whether that's in a company or in a university.
Richard Cahoon: So it starts with looking at inventiveness and then it moves into, you start thinking about markets and business and this value proposition lens I talk about and then you start addressing other issues about things, like the things that make the difference between success and failure like scale up, a lot of inventions you get them and you go, this is great, but you can't get it out of the lab because it can't be turned into something that could be manufactured and brought to reality.
Richard Cahoon: And then it goes through all the way to where you're actually managing this process. In a company or in a university and using the different tools that I've mentioned.
Chris Wofford: Dick Cahoon. Great to have you in the studio today.
Richard Cahoon: Thank you very much, Chris.
Chris Wofford: Tons of fun.
Richard Cahoon: Pleasure.
Chris Wofford: Thanks for listening to Cornell Keynotes. Check out the episode notes for information on eCornell's Invention and IP Management Online Certificate Program. Thanks again, friends, and subscribe to stay in touch.