The UK Department of Transport says there are as many as 3,000 accidents and 10 deaths annually in the UK alone caused by wheels flying off commercial vehicles.

Wheels fly because of a failure of their nuts and/or studs. Many factors contribute to these failures, but they all concern one thing - stud tension.

There is only a small ’safe tension zone’ of between 220kN and 260kN. Above 220kN to ensure enough friction is generated and below 260kN to prevent fatigue in the stud.

Wheelcrown™ is a patented bolt/stud tensioning system, which is faster, simpler and safer™ than the current system.

Wheelcrown™ ensures all wheels are securely attached, yet requires less time to fit and maintain, leading to cost-savings for the life of the vehicle. Wheelcrown™ therefore pays for itself many times over.

To learn more about how Wheelcrown™ works visit the website.

This is part 2 of the series. Part one can be read here. But if you just want the guts of it, here’s a quick summary:

• RULE 1 - do not make your idea public prior to filing a patent.
• RULE 2 - don’t file your patent until you have to.
• Step 1 - research the idea.
• Step 2 - carry out a patent search.

Okay, recap over… So you’ve got an idea, there is a market for it and no one had done anything like it before. What do you do next?

Step 3 is to draft a basic design. You need to figure out how the product will work and get a basic design down on paper. You don’t need to get into the nitty-gritty of the detail, just get it to a point where others can see what it will look like and how it will work. This will be used as a starting point to answer the following questions:

1. Will it work?
2. Can it be made? (In the quantities you are thinking of.)
3. Is there a margin?

If you are technically minded you will be able to research and answer these questions yourself, but most people will need to start talking to experts. Remember rule 1 though, do not make your idea public prior to filing a patent. So you will need to ensure all your discussions are confidential.

RULE 3 - Have a signed non-disclosure agreement (NDA) in place before discussing your idea with anyone. This applies even if you know and trust the person. If anyone later tries to argue that you had made the idea public by talking to these people you can disprove it with a signed NDA. I find most people don’t have a problem signing an NDA and many actually get a kick out of being let in on a secret.

A good NDA (also known as a Confidentiality Agreement or Confidentiality Undertaking) should be simple and clear. There are two good reasons for this, firstly it ensures there can be no misinterpretation of the terms; secondly it allows the person you ask to sign the NDA to understand that there is no risk in their doing so.

The NDA should simply state that the other party will not disclose your idea without your permission. It will however exclude any information they already knew, is in the public domain or is given to them legally by another party. You should be able to compile a decent NDA yourself by doing a web-search. Be sure to read through a few of them to ensure yours covers everything you need it to.

For some answers you won’t want to disclose your full idea and deal with the issue of NDA’s. This may well be the case when you want to get several quotes for the cost of producing your design. A simple way around this is to disguise your design. Show components that have similar shapes to your design but do not give away your idea. You may need help in doing this from one of the experts who signed your NDA.

To get positive answers to the 3 questions above you may well need to redesign your product a couple of times. You might learn that changing the shape or the basic functionality will greatly reduce your costs.

RULE 4 - make changes as early in the process as possible. Remember that a change in the design at this stage costs you nothing… changing a design after patents are filed or manufacturing has begun can cost you a lot.

We already knew we had an idea, there was a market for it and no one had done anything like it before… now we know it will work, can be made and can be sold at a profit. It’s time to start getting serious about taking this to market. Come back for the next post to learn how.

Two weeks of blogging… I’m still not sure where it is taking me.  I got a few comments this week at last.  It seems that my blog about inventing got the most interest, so the second in the series will be coming soon.  Stay tuned.

This weeks posts:

• Blog design - I asked for feedback on my blog theme
• The Pursuit of WOW! #39 - part 1 - take a serious daily break
• The ultimate mobile phone! - how did they sell us the dream before they could deliver it?
• EskimoFriends.com - a great website for music lovers
• The Pursuit of WOW! #39 - part 2 - do something different

An extract from ‘The Pursuit of WOW!’ by Tom Peters:What if we managers put rebirth at the top of our agendas? … suggestions:

• Do something different. One company gives its telemarketers a whole day “off” each week to work on productivity-improvement projects. In addition to rekindling energy for the primary job, project payoffs have more than covered the costs of the extra staffing required. I can imagine such an approach applied almost everywhere.

My own thoughts on this? I think getting people to work on ‘new’ areas, not even necessarily directly related to their work, is hugely beneficial. It makes people think about different problems; which leads them to look at problems in a different way. Who knows what they will find when they then bring that new way of looking back to their old problems…

I thought I should write something about my links… first up - EskimoFriends.com.

EskimoFriends is the no.1 fan-site for Irish musician Damien Rice and was recently voted Ireland’s Best Artist/Fan Website by the readers of Ireland’s leading music magazine HotPress. It beat out leading U2 fan-site atU2.com and theFrames.ie, the official site of The Frames - who’s lead singer Glen Hansard recently won an Oscar for Best Song. An amazing achievement for EskimoFriends, considering Damien hasn’t toured since last October!

The site gives you the latest news on Damien, as well as interviews, live recordings, lyrics, tabs, tour dates etc. It’s strong point though is its forum, which has an incredibly friendly and warm community built up. In the forum you’ll get reviews of all Damien’s gigs as well as recommendations for other music and lots more.

So if you like Damien’s music (or haven’t yet heard it) check it out…

A mobile phone that:

• lets you make free calls (over the Internet)
• lets you surf the web at high speed
• takes high resolution photographs and video
• stores and plays all your music
• works as a satellite navigation system
• is a mobile games console
• is a mobile PC
• is a mobile video player; even connecting wirelessly with your home cinema projector and transmits high resolution video with surround sound
• is easy to learn and simple to use

That’s the phone I want. That’s the phone that has been promised to me since mobile phones first became popular. That’s the phone that we are fast approaching. But that is not the phone that has been in my pocket all these years.

What I don’t understand is how the phone companies managed to sell us this dream while supplying us the unreliable, expensive and under-delivering phones we have all been buying for the past 10 years.

We bought mobile phones before the networks that let them work were fully developed… We bought camera phones before the pictures they took were recognisable…

I want to know how they did it. How can I replicate it? How can I sell a product that I can conceive now, but won’t be able to deliver fully until 10 years from now?

I can see the tech-loving “early adaptors” buying something new for the excitement of what it is to become; but how did the mobile phone companies drag the rest of us along for the ride?

Imagine what could be created if every under-developed idea was supported like this… A man on the moon is nothing.

An extract from ‘The Pursuit of WOW!’ by Tom Peters:

What if we managers put rebirth at the top of our agendas? … suggestions:

• Take a serious daily break. I’m worried about my new, high-speed Canon copier. What will I do now for a break? I find - seriously - that many of my best ideas have come while I stood by my old copier, feeding in 75 pages, one at a (slow) time. Planned coffee breaks are one (good) thing, but I’m talking about something else, a real pause to refresh or redirect our brain waves.

My own thoughts on this? I never had that slow a copier, but I do often find that I think up a solution as soon as I stop thinking about the problem. Unfortunately, it is usually just as I’m about to fall off to sleep and I have to wake myself up to write it down incase I have forgotten by morning!

I’m not yet 100% happy with the look of this blog. I’m going to be playing around with it for a few days, so forgive me if it looks a mess at any point… I’m probably just changing to a new theme or something.

I haven’t yet bought the ‘Custom Style Sheet’ option. I want to see if I can get away with using a standard theme first.

I’d like to know what ye think about the look and usability of the blog at the moment. Is everything easy to find? I was told my original layout made it very difficult to find the ‘comment’ button… This one seems to make that part easy, but does it make something else difficult?

• Is the font size okay?
• Are there enough links etc on the sidebar?
• Are there others that should be there?

Any feedback would be appreciated.

My first week blogging. There have been no comments yet on the content, so I don’t know how I’m doing… feedback appreciated. I can even take constructive criticism!

So far I’m just trying to start a range of topics and see if any grab peoples interest… let me know. Suggestions for topics welcome too. I’m still not sure where this blogging business will lead me, but only one way to find out.

This weeks posts:

• Intro - I briefly set out what I plan to blog about
• So where to start? My latest invention… - I introduce BoilingPoint™
• Smiling is good - semi-regular fun topic, song about a new tech-bubble
• The Pursuit of WOW! - semi-regular topic, I introduce a series of extracts from Tom Peters’ book
• I have an invention worth MILLIONS!! - start of a series on how to exploit your inventions
• The Pursuit of WOW! #69 - the first extract from Tom Peters’ book… why failing is good
• Week 10, 2008 - Reviewed - the first weekly round-up to help people scan my blog for intereseting posts

An extract from ‘The Pursuit of WOW!’ by Tom Peters:

‘69. “To learn, fail… If nothing ever breaks, you don’t know how strong it is. Strike out fear of failure… Reward success and failure equally - punish inactivity.” David Kelley, IDEO‘

My own thoughts on this? I remember John Watson (F1 commentator) pointing out how Michael Schumacher didn’t just drive to the edge of what the car could do, he drove beyond it. He was constantly pushing the car a little too much and correcting it. That way he knew he was always at the limit.

It’s the same in everything you do. You have to go beyond the limit to know where that limit is. But equally, you don’t want to go so far that you can’t catch it once you find that limit. I think you should be like Schumacher, fail small and often.