[5.4] Stakeholders and Invention & Innovation Essential idea: There are three key roles in invention and innovation, and these can be shared by one or more people

Task – define these 3 key roles The Inventor an individual working outside or inside an organization, who is committed to the invention of a novel product The Product Champion an influential individual, usually working within an organization, who develops enthusiasm for a particular idea or invention and “champions” it The Entrepreneur an influential individual who can take an invention to market, often by financing the development, production and diffusion of a product into the marketplace. Often take the most risks

Entrepreneurs and Inventors Go to the following sites and find the answers to these questions Did McDonalds invent the hamburger? Who had the idea of having McDonalds restaurants everywhere? What did he risk? Who invented potato chips?  Who brought them to market in other places?

The inventor as a product champion and or entrepreneur – reasons why inventors often take the role of product champion and / or entrepreneur James Dyson, (born 2 May 1947) is a British inventor, industrial designer and founder of the Dyson company. Dyson is a classic example of a lone inventor who took his invention to market, by championing the significance of his design. From here and after years of research and development Dyson developed the entrepreneurial skills to take his company to international acclaim and success.

Multidisciplinary Design Teams. Design teams are multidisciplinary groups composed of many design members. Each designer comes from a specialist discipline, such as electronics, manufacturing, thermodynamics etc. The project groups include formal teams and temporary teams which will work on aspects of the product. A task-designer assignment model is used to match the designer with the right design task.

Multidisciplinary Design Teams. Benefits of such a team include: Designing of more complex products becomes easier Large knowledge and expertise base. Rapid communication methods to solve problems. Greater creativity as you can bounce ideas off people.

Multidisciplinary Design Teams.   Disadvantages include. Friction with in a team. A global team will be in different time zones. Turnover of team members can slow down development of project. Time pressure to produce results or solutions

A high school drop out, Richard Branson founded the Virgin group of more than 400 companies. It all grew out of a small record shop in London. Branson said he became an entrepreneur by chance because he wanted to have some fun and do things better than existing firm Steve Jobs was the co-founder of Apple Computers, and a leading exponent of the personal computer revolution. Jobs oversaw the development of key innovations in the mobile technology revolution such as iPhone, iPod and iPad.

Henry Ford pioneered the use of Mass production for motor cars, helping to reduce the price and make cars affordable for the average American consumer. Along with Sergey Brin, Page is the co-founder of Google, which became one of fastest growing businesses of all time. Larry Page helped invent Page Rank which helped to make Google the most popular search engine