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Original Host: Filip Valica, original host of The Product Startup Podcast.
Host: Kevin Mako, founder of Product Startup and the leading expert in hardware startup consulting. A hardware entrepreneur since 1999, Kevin has advised more than 1,500 founders and built and scaled MAKO Invent through its acquisition by TriMech in 2024.
Building a Repeatable Product-Idea Practice
This solo episode challenges the belief that creativity is an inborn talent and presents practical ways to generate more useful product ideas. It focuses on building creative habits, changing perspective, and turning inspiration into concepts worth evaluating.
Episode transcript
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Filip Valica: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Product Startup Podcast, podcast that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors, product designers, and other industry professionals. This podcast is run by Mako
Filip Valica: Design + Invent, and hosted by Filip Valica. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial idea to putting your product on the shelf. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business. Now onto the show.
Filip Valica: The Product Startup, Episode 55, training creativity and getting more ideas in less time.
Filip Valica: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Product Startup podcast, where we talk about turning ideas into successful products step by step. I'm Filip Valica, and thanks for listening to me today.
Filip Valica: In the last episode, we talked to Dan and Justin with Milton the Mealtime Companion. So make sure to check out Episode 54 if you want to hear more about industrial design, engineering, and prototyping. typing a food safe children's product.
Filip Valica: In today's episode, I wanted to talk about a skill that is pervasive in the entire product development process, and that's coming up with interesting ideas, whether it is ways
Filip Valica: of prototyping your product or manufacturing it differently or testing it differently with your audience or even marketing it, creativity plays a huge role in using your budget and time really efficiently.
Filip Valica: Many people that I talk to assume that they're not good at coming up with new or creative ideas. They say, hey, I'm not a creative person. Or I wish I'd thought of that. And I think that with the right focus, method, and tools, you can train yourself to think creatively.
Filip Valica: I use these step-by-step techniques myself to brainstorm new product ideas. And if you have a product idea, I would put these methods to work in other stages of the process. So, for example, thinking of new markets and applications,
Filip Valica: packaging details, or ways of advertising your product. So first of all, I think that creativity is just like a muscle. Coming up with good ideas is a process. It's not something that happens by magic.
Filip Valica: And I found that the journey to the best ideas isn't really a straight line. It's kind of this blend of accident, inspiration, and investigation. A lot of this is within our control.
Filip Valica: So bottom line, with practice, anyone can think of great. ideas when I first started out in my career after my first few jobs I felt a lot less creative this was clearest to me after I took on a role managing other
Filip Valica: designers and engineers at large companies engineers and designers turned ideas into products using proven methods that worked we followed processes that simplified variables help build quality products and in short creativity took a
Filip Valica: backseat towards consistency so like any skill creativity grows and becomes easier to turn on and off as we use it. So if we think back to when we were young,
Filip Valica: it was really easy to draw pictures or create Lego models or, you know, claim animation or whatever that we were doing in the past of imaginary things that didn't really exist. We were blind to why things
Filip Valica: didn't work. As kids, our creativity was unchecked. And I think it's possible to get our brain to think this way again. With practice, everything around us can inspire us. Trip to this grocery store, magazine articles,
Filip Valica: conversations with friends will take on new meanings and some days my head turns into this like popcorn maker of ideas just bouncing off the wall. The internal chatter is just
Filip Valica: deafening. I have to write ideas on sticky notes in my phone or in a notebook just to clear my head and hash them out. So when you're brainstorming ideas, quantity is better than quality. It takes
Filip Valica: many ideas to come up with a few that may be successful, the ones that stick,
Filip Valica: and ideas build on each other. So our brains combine these mundane thoughts and new ways to come up with something unique. And sometimes this happens while sleeping or when doing something monotonous like
Filip Valica: raking leaves or washing the car. And so when I need to be creative, I isolate myself and listen to music on repeat. How you disconnect is specific to you. Learn what works for you. So go to a noisy
Filip Valica: coffee shop, a quiet library, or maybe out in nature where you can disconnect completely from technology.
Filip Valica: Just remember, the quickest way of killing creativity is to think practically. So don't think of ways that your ideas won't work right now. If you let those thoughts in, your right brain, the creative side, we'll switch off in
Filip Valica: your left brain, the analytical side will take over. So keep those ideas flowing. There will be time to analyze them later, and for now focus on creating new concepts and letting them feed off each other. Listen to your body and recognize when you need to take a break.
Filip Valica: Much like a muscle, once exhausted, your creativity needs to recharge. Do something with the other half of your brain. For example, in the morning,
Filip Valica: I will work on creative tasks and then in the afternoons, I'll work to return emails and phone calls when I don't need to be as creative. So on this episode, I'm going to talk about six ways that we can all come up with much better
Filip Valica: ideas in a tactical way, steps that we can take that will generate new ideas automatically just by following a process. And those techniques are looking inward, getting out of our head,
Filip Valica: a technique that is called 635 brainstorming, a technique called scamper, then doing substitution, or what I call this for that, and then lastly looking at trends. So number one, looking inward.
Filip Valica: Harvey McKay said, find something you love to do and you'll never have to work a day in your life. Passion pushes us forward when we hit a challenge. It's the reason that we jump out of bed in the morning and it helps us deal with the tedious, difficult parts of our work.
Filip Valica: But unless you can make money with it, our passions are just hobbies. I really enjoy working with my hands and feel energized after a day of building things. Before today, that cabinet was a pile of wood.
Filip Valica: Working with creative freedom on repetitive tasks in solitude is much like meditation for me. People make a living building custom furniture and I've definitely daydreamed about following that path. But deep down, I know that I couldn't pay our bills through my woodworking.
Filip Valica: I'm certainly not efficient, and I spend way too much time setting up each step. And absolutely, I can fix those things, but the truth is, working to other people's designs and building to their deadlines would take away the creativity that I enjoy now.
Filip Valica: So, since I understand that market, I think I'm better off using my hobby as inspiration to help me think of products that woodworkers might need. A great example of this is the saw stop, which is a table saw that stop.
Filip Valica: the blade within five milliseconds of contact with any body part. Someone took their perspective, their hobby, and created a solution for it. So take action now. Brainstorm.
Filip Valica: List your passions, your hobbies, your dreams, your fears, your frustrations.
Filip Valica: What did you enjoy as a child that you didn't do as an adult? What keeps you from doing those things? Mentally walk through your day and list out your tasks, including getting ready for the day, chores around the house, working.
Filip Valica: things that you hate or you put off intentionally or maybe even subconsciously using the above lists think of the products that would solve those problems imagine a trip to the future how have
Filip Valica: products made any of those above tasks more enjoyable or efficient or easier for you number two
Filip Valica: get out of your head at work my best resources for new ideas are our customers employees and suppliers.
Filip Valica: Great suppliers specialize in materials or manufacturing processes and spot potential issues before we do. Employees in our quality control assembly and testing departments know
Filip Valica: our products inside out. They have great ideas for improvements to our product line. Every day our customers rely on what we make to get their own work done and they expect results.
Filip Valica: And they do that without wearing any rose tinted glasses. So if we're lucky, our customers tell products support their issues and engineering gets a chance to fix the design. We can all be blind to faults in our own
Filip Valica: creations. So our team and our customers let us know what works and what to fix, but only if we listen. So some great examples of products that have done this, and these are just random examples that I found online,
Filip Valica: is pro-teethguard.com. They ship custom-made teeth guards direct to the consumer cutting out the cost of health care by removing the mental man, which is typically the dentist that takes impression of your teeth.
Filip Valica: Black milk clothing creates unique tights with these niche patterns for people bored by the standard colors of tights. Beard brand that you might be familiar with.
Filip Valica: Develop men's grooming products to keep up with increasing popularity of beards. And by the way, I'm not endorsing in any of these products, and I don't have any experience with them personally.
Filip Valica: I'm just bringing them up because they're great examples of companies using customer feedback to drive that design process. Some even set up spaces for visitors to give feedback and ideas.
Filip Valica: So sometimes this can generate a lot of noise because you've got a lot of people giving you advice that maybe doesn't have a whole lot of value. So companies might ask visitors to vote on ideas or rank submissions somehow.
Filip Valica: At one point, Dell Computer had a site called Idea Storm that had over 23,000 ideas submitted.
Filip Valica: 740,000 votes, over 100,000 comments,
Filip Valica: and only 540 ideas implemented. And that last figure really jumped out at me. Dell basically implemented a little bit over 2% of the ideas that were submitted. So clearly it takes a lot of effort to find usable ideas.
Filip Valica: But it's also a smart strategy for the company. They get lots of ideas and interact with customers to strengthen their brand for relatively little
Filip Valica: effort. Other companies have kind of followed suit my Starbucks idea as a site. There's a BMW co-creation
Filip Valica: lab that also does crowdsourcing. And how could it be different.org is a independent site where anyone can submit and vote on ideas in almost any topic. So take action now.
Filip Valica: Of course, if you had customers or a focus group to interview, maybe you wouldn't be listening to this podcast. But until you do, your competitors customers and create your own focus group ask people about their urgent pain
Filip Valica: how are they coping with the problem really dig deep with them get to the root of the issue make sure to discuss the core problem and not just the symptoms so keep asking the wise look
Filip Valica: at the online reviews what are the must-have features mentioned by commenters what are the biggest frustrations list out the measurable ways products in your market meet people's needs interview early adopters in your niche. Speak with people who use cutting-edge products
Filip Valica: paired with new technology.
Filip Valica: Early adopters are more forgiving of product shortcomings, and they crave products with features unseen before. Many will even pay a premium for a product that no one else has, even if it's a beta release.
Filip Valica: So, interview people around you. Is the product specific to a place or time? Listen for trigger words like, I hate when blank happens and I'm not ready. or informed or prepared.
Filip Valica: I don't have time or energy to blank. I wish I was more efficient at blank.
Filip Valica: Or I get bored when I blank. I wish that blank had the blank feature.
Filip Valica: I would buy blank, but it's so ugly, expensive, fragile, heavy, difficult to use, tough to assemble. I could be better at blank if I only had blank.
Filip Valica: So I could be better at a hobby or chore or a task if I only had this tool, service. If you think this doesn't work, Google, chime, Pekarsky, and I know I definitely butchered that.
Filip Valica: It spelled C-H-A-I-P-I-I-K-I-I-I-N-I-I-N-I-N-I-N-I-N-I-N-E-N-B-E-V-E-B-E-E -R-E-E-R-E-E-R-E-E-E-R-E. to bring in annual sales of over $100 million.
Filip Valica: So I'd like to take a quick break to talk about the one-on-one coaching that I offer entrepreneurs and other small business owners who are launching their physical products. If you're just getting started, I can work with you to create a game plan based on your
Filip Valica: skill set and budget. We'll go through the product development process together and outline your steps specific to your industry or product. Based on your capabilities, I can suggest ways that you can create or outsource work with prototypes, do feasibility testing, or even just
Filip Valica: make sure that you're working on an idea that has legs. Most sessions are usually an hour long and we talk on Skype or through the phone. You set the pace, and we come up with tasks that you can knock out before we meet again, moving at the speed that you're most comfortable with.
Filip Valica: I'll help to hold you accountable and make sure that you're biting off a right-sized chunk that works for you. Go to the product startup.com and click on the consulting tab to sign up for a call.
Filip Valica: 635 brainstorming. This method was designed for six people to brainstorm three ideas each in five minutes. I first learned about this technique in college and used it to generate creative ideas within my engineering teams.
Filip Valica: This method works really great for introverts. When brainstorming as a group, some people aren't comfortable to speak their mind. They think they need to agree with a boss or maybe not ruffle any feathers.
Filip Valica: So using this method really gives everyone equal say and works for people who prefer to write or sketch. And it creates a lot of ideas in less than 30 minutes. So here's an example of how to take action with this method.
Filip Valica: The method below works with a group of four people, though you can really scale it up or down. You'll need a sheet of paper, pens and pencils for each person, and one timer.
Filip Valica: Give each person a sheet of paper. Divide that sheet into equal sections by the number of people. The drawing space will fill cramped after about four sections, so try to split large groups into smaller teams.
Filip Valica: Give a prompt to the group, such as ideas for a better mountstrap. Set a timer for three minutes. I found that giving people more time just slows down the momentum. Start the timer. Round one.
Filip Valica: Without talking, each person sketches or writes out ideas in the first space of their sheet.
Filip Valica: When the timer goes off, pencils go down, and each seat of paper moves clockwise to the next person.
Filip Valica: Next step, reset the timer to three minutes and start again. The second round then begins, and without talking, each person sketches or writes out a new idea in the second space of their.
Filip Valica: their sheet they can also add to an idea previously written on this sheet repeats the steps above until you've gone as many rounds of you have sections of the paper at the end of the
Filip Valica: exercise and definitely within 30 minutes you'll have several pages full of ideas that you didn't think about before I've used this many times both in small business and entrepreneur settings as well as in a corporate setting and it never fails to work
Filip Valica: scamper take an existing product or feature and turn it into something completely different. This method helps you generate ideas that customers may not even know to ask for. They may not know what they need or if it's even possible to make a product like that.
Filip Valica: So Scamper stands for S substitute materials, processes, or users. C, combine products or features.
Filip Valica: A, adapt it to do something different.
Filip Valica: M.
Filip Valica: Modify or M for Minify or M for Magnify, a feature, shape, for meaning,
Filip Valica: P for put it to another use,
Filip Valica: E for eliminate waste effort time parts,
Filip Valica: and R for rearrange or reverse the layout of components.
Filip Valica: So for example,
Filip Valica: using the E eliminate prompt makes me think of reducing waste in a manufacturing process or reducing the time it takes to manufacture a product or the number of parts or the cost. And some examples of companies that took this
Filip Valica: prompt to the extreme level and by focusing on, let's say, eliminating costs and parts in their products, you can look to Tata Nano, the company that makes an ultra-low-cost car for a cost of $2,200.
Filip Valica: Or you can look to Exo Computer, a $100 netbook from the one laptop per child foundation. Or you can look to Siemens Essenza, which is a low-cost MRI unit for use in small clinics
Filip Valica: in rural areas. So take action now. Choose one prompt from Scamper and apply it to your idea. Spend five or ten minutes to come up with an exhaustive list. And if you need something that helps you with this,
Filip Valica: I bought this deck of cards a while back. It's called Thinker Toys by Michael Mikalko. It's like the scamper method but has more guided prompts. Just shuffle the deck, pull a card, and give your creativity a kick. It also works well in groups.
Filip Valica: So, for example, you can pass out cards to everybody on the team. assign each person or small group to brainstorm new ideas based on that card.
Filip Valica: So using substitution or this for that. I'm sure that there's a proper term for this method, but for now I've named it this for that. Take the benefits of a product in one industry and apply them to a new product in a different field.
Filip Valica: This encourages me to think of new applications and helps me shift my perspective.
Filip Valica: For example, in one list, name industries, fields, or passions and interests. This will be like a list of markets for your product. Don't pick similar industries. They should have little or no connection.
Filip Valica: An example of this would be listing out industries and interests. So list one would have health care for the elderly, tools for woodworkers, food, specifically barbecue.
Filip Valica: Then in the second list, write out products that have changed how people do things along with their benefits. If you starve for ideas, see eBay or Amazon bestseller lists.
Filip Valica: And these products really shouldn't have anything in common with the industries that you picked in list one. So in our list two example here, we would choose,
Filip Valica: number one, a tablet.
Filip Valica: The benefits are portable entertainment, a replacement for your laptop or PC. The second item on the list might be a segue. The benefits are moving people on tours or for security patrol,
Filip Valica: and it's easy to use and takes you to places without effort or thinking. And third item on the list might be Sugrew Putty. And if you haven't heard of this product is actually really cool. It's a cross between clay and glue that helps anyone make quick
Filip Valica: DIY repairs. So now let's combine the items from the first list with parts of the or features of the second list and see if something sticks.
Filip Valica: So the final list is a tablet design for the elderly that's easy to use and comfortable to hold. Again, we combine just the first items on the list.
Filip Valica: Maybe a tablet app with a virtual tour of the top 30 barbecue smokehouses in the country with interviews and recipes from owners. Or maybe you could create
Filip Valica: a set of wooden plugs to fill holes left by old hardware like hinges and drawer handles on wooden drawers and cabinets.
Filip Valica: Again, all we're doing is combining the industry like food with the benefit of other revolutionary products, like, for example, the segue that move. people on tours.
Filip Valica: And you can do this with any market, any type of product, just to get the juices flowing.
Filip Valica: Another way to get really great ideas and to watch trends. Now, before you turn off the podcast and completely dismiss this idea, I absolutely agree that probably the worst product
Filip Valica: ideas are the Me Too products that capitalize on the success of a competitor or fad without really adding value. So many times the Me Too products compete only on price at the cost of features or
Filip Valica: quality. A good example of this was the pen that doodled in 3D. It was on sale for maybe a few months before I saw it at our local craft store here in Houston on clearance because it didn't
Filip Valica: really solve a need. It just seemed that someone took the technology and headline of the day and paired it with an existing product. 3D printing plus hot glue gun equals new product. The goal of these
Filip Valica: Me Too products seems to sell enough units at inflated prices until people get over the fad.
Filip Valica: The Apple iPad created an entire industry.
Filip Valica: And while these technologies are different, the timing and market conditions determine success and failure for sure. And there wasn't a need for people to have tablets until developers created the apps to show the need for a tablet.
Filip Valica: So of course, without paying users carried over from the iPhone, developers would have needed more convincing. Tablets existed between the Apple Newton and the iPad, but none with the same level of success as the latter. Looking back to some data, consumers are becoming increasingly more.
Filip Valica: health-conscious, more tech-savvy, and more interested in self-care.
Filip Valica: So looking at the tech industry specifically, we can see the rise of the co-op economy, right, like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, consumer-level 3D printing like MacGrabot and all the other machines that came to your local
Filip Valica: brick-and-mortar, faster communication like Snapchat and other tools, wearable computing, like the Pebble Watch on Kickstarter that was a pretty big success even though they sold out, and
Filip Valica: automation, Google Nest and Alexa and all the other products that are out there. So some product ideas that come to mind based on these trends, an increase in the use and maybe the drop in price of 3D scanners and tools to aid in digitizing products because people
Filip Valica: don't really want to bother with 3D modeling their own parts. They just want to get stuff out there. And then what if someone focused on new 3D printer filament types and other accessories so you could make things out of not just plastic, but maybe some complex blend of
Filip Valica: materials that are maybe a plastic is the binding agent that fuses particulates together. You've got aggregate and concrete where you've got pebbles in concrete. Now you could have plastic holding together bits of metal or other things that get printed. Another idea might be
Filip Valica: products that help protect people's privacy while on the internet or ensures that they get proper service despite eroding neutrality rules.
Filip Valica: So let's take action. Timing is everything if you're looking at trends. If you don't hop on early, it's almost impossible to catch up. But if you're too early, then you're the Apple Newton, and the market may not be ready for your product.
Filip Valica: I look for changes in technology that have a large impact on the world around us and open the door for new products. I try to read industry journals and listen to news reports. Watch for companies making large investments in research and development in specific fields.
Filip Valica: Where are the talented people working? So what companies are stealing away talent right now? Amazon, Google, Uber, what type of, technologies are those people working on. I'm going to leave a list of sites in the show notes for you to
Filip Valica: check out. That includes trend publications that monitor trends worldwide, crowdfunding websites, and product blogs that have unique or niche products for specific audiences. There's also ways
Filip Valica: of checking out trends through social media and by looking at merchants to see what their best-selling products are. So that's really one of the best ways to see where the market is going by looking at trending products on eBay,
Filip Valica: looking at Amazon bestsellers, looking on Etsy trending items. You can even go on AliExpress and look at their popular products.
Filip Valica: This was an information-packed episode about the top techniques that I use to generate new ideas. There's definitely a lot more than this, but the bottom line is that you need to practice this every day.
Filip Valica: And as I mentioned on the Just Start challenge, and by the way, if you haven't taken that, you can sign up for it on the website under the resources tab.
Filip Valica: You need to practice some of this stuff every day. And that means just taking one of these techniques and practicing with it and using that until you get really comfortable with it. And once you start getting results from it, you're going to feel a lot better about it,
Filip Valica: but it's also going to help train that brain muscle, that creativity muscle that I talked about early on. So the number one thing to remember with all of this is it's not necessarily the tactics.
Filip Valica: It's staying consistent with the practice and just doing it whenever you have some time. I certainly don't think that people are born creative. I think all of us can help train our creative muscle.
Filip Valica: And I definitely think it's possible for even people that claim to have no creativity to start looking at the world differently. So to summarize the top techniques to generate new ideas are to look inward,
Filip Valica: get out of your head,
Filip Valica: 635 brainstorming, using the scamper method,
Filip Valica: using substitution or this for that, and then watching trends.
Filip Valica: And now, here's a 30-second ad spot from listener, Daniel Cole, who's launched a Kickstarter campaign for Bekla Torch. Hi, Philip, and the product startup listeners, this is done from Bekla. We're a startup based in the UK, and I'm excited to tell you about my new product, Bekla Torch.
Filip Valica: It's a compact, bright LED light that can be used anywhere to light up dark spaces, in handbags, drawers, wardrobes, when you're camping, or even the toilet at night. It has a wide-angled LED beam, four fixing options,
Filip Valica: multiple time of settings, giving you the flexibility to seek your needs. We launch on the Kickstarter on the 20th of June, so if you'd like the send of Beckler Torch, and please back us. In the meantime,
Filip Valica: check out to our Facebook page, Bekla Torch. That's B-E-K-L-A-Torch for more info. Thanks, Philip. Keep other great work. We love it. Thanks, Daniel, for submitting that clip, and good luck to you. I hope you
Filip Valica: get some great feedback from the product startup audience. For this particular episode, I have an extensive article dedicated to what I talked about here. So if you find the show notes, it'll direct you to the appropriate spot in the site with all the links and resources that you
Filip Valica: need to take action.
Filip Valica: I also have a bit of news for the podcast. After thinking about it for a few months, I've made a decision to suspend the podcast. My wife and I are having our second daughter in August, and I have a list of home renovation projects to complete before the sleepless nights
Filip Valica: begin. And as I mentioned on previous episode, I'm also joining my mom's real estate business before she retires, and I'm still mentoring startups at Station Houston, which is a local startup incubator. And I'm also still working with clients and continuing to manage my Amazon products.
Filip Valica: So I've got a pretty full plate. I'm still really passionate about product development and encouraging you to get going on your products. And that's why I launched this podcast. And that's also why I'll continue to help where I can in the product startup workshop, which is our private Facebook group.
Filip Valica: So join the group if you haven't already. And if you're not yet on the email list, make sure you sign up by going to the product startup.com and scroll to the footer. I won't be sending as much mail out, but I'll continue to send out news and tips as I run across them.
Filip Valica: And I'll let you know when I restart the show. So thank you for listening to the show and for giving me your feedback. Good luck on your own product startup. And if you haven't started already, remember that the first step to success is to just start.
Filip Valica: Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Product Startup Podcast, the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market and turn it into a big success. This podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent, the first firm in North
Filip Valica: America to provide global caliber end-to-end physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product businesses. If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to Mako-design.com.
Filip Valica: That's M-A-K-O-D-D-com for a free consultation. from one of Mako Design Four Design Studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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