The Eureka Method
About the Author
Dr. John Hershey holds 144 U.S. patents in fields including spread spectrum, digital TV, 3-D display, medical devices, logistics, e-commerce, jet engine prognostics, radar, cryptography, power line communications, sensors, satellite communications, railroading, and signal processing. He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for contributions to secure communications. He is the author or coauthor of eight books and two encyclopedia entries. He worked in the intelligence community and the U.S. Department of Commerce, helped build a regional office of a major government services company, and most recently served at the General Electric Global Research Center in upstate New York. He has taught as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Colorado, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Union Graduate College.The Eureka MethodHow to Think Like an Inventor
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Dedicated to Fergus Ross, a good man and a good inventor
Contents
I thank Roger Stewart of McGraw-Hill for his mentoring and guidance. His encouragement and patience are deeply appreciated. I also thank Scott Asmus, Rich DeCristofaro, Dave Goldman, and Howard Skaist, four outstanding attorneys, for their taking the time to educate me.
T his book is designed to help you become an inventor. Books about inventing are already numerous, as are conventions and seminars devoted to the topic. So why, you may ask, does the world need
yet another book about inventing? The answer is that
The Eureka Method: How to Think Like an Inventor offers something unique. While most other books focus on what to do with your device
after it is inventedhow to patent it or license it or promote and sell it
The Eureka Method steps back to the beginning.This book will teach you how to
think like an inventor. In other words, it will teach you how to come up with new ideas for inventions. This is, after all, for most people the hardest part of becoming an inventor.The fact that you are reading this shows your interest in inventing. In my experience, a person is interested in becoming an inventor for two reasons: dissatisfaction with an existing product or service (too large, too slow, too expensive, too difficult to use), or a dream and desire to create something entirely new, a product or service that will augment humanitys capability to reach farther, move faster, aggregate and analyze all sorts of data, or bring together pieces and form a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.Here we examine how you can fulfill both those inventor roles by developing and seizing
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