DESIGN AND INNOVATION CENTER SEMINAR SERIES

Emphasizing Innovation and Creativity

in Engineering Design

Bringing Ideas/Inventions to the Market

Ms. Mary Kaye Denning

CEO and Chief Nudger, GarageInventorLive, Inc.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

6:00 PM

Compton Lounge, Stilwell Hall (SH), Room 103

For Directions http://www.csuohio.edu/aboutcsu/campusmap.pdf

Summary

Ms. Mary Kaye Denning, a former marketing director for ID Brands Inc., a New York product development firm, will discuss what it takes to market inventions of inventors.  Ms. Denning is the founder and head of GarageInventorLive, a startup Cleveland non-profit inaugurated at the conference “Reinventing Made in USA” held at the NASA Glenn Research Center in August.   At the August conference she noted “If we can link an inventor with the people who can test an idea, engineer it, run it through the gauntlet of legal and marketing hurdles and bring a product to our existing contract manufacturing sector, we can put a new foundation under our transitioning economy.”

Ty Haines, vice president of manufacturing services at WIRE-Net, a West Side manufacturing support group, sees GarageInventorLive as a new way for inventors to turn ideas on paper into products a manufacturer can make, and eventually market a finished, reproducible product for a retailer like Home Depot. Starting with the notion that a great idea isn’t worth anything unless the inventor figures out how to make and market it, and a good contract manufacturer needs a regular supply of new customers bringing them things to make, GarageInventorLive assists inventors in successfully transforming their ideas into nationally marketable products.