Welcome to Planet Eureka!

Dear Inventors & Company Leaders,

It is with great pride that the Eureka! Ranch team announces the soft launch of Planet Eureka!, home of the USA National Innovation Marketplace and future home of additional National Marketplaces designed to bring together buyers and sellers of intellectual property.

Our Purposes:

1. Give all Inventors - no matter what their age, education or background - a FAIR SHOT at selling their invention to companies small and large.

2. Help Companies PAINLESSLY FIND AND FILTER innovations that can help them more profitably compete in the global economy.

The Planet Eureka! marketplace is dream that I've had since founding Eureka! in 1986. A dream that was accelerated when I was a judge on the first season of ABC TV's AMERICAN INVENTOR and learned how independent inventors were being taken advantage of. A dream that was accelerated about 10 years ago, when our tracking research identified that corporate clients were becoming less bold and brave when it came to innovation.

FACT: Business People are Desperate for Innovation. Research indicates that 8 out of 10 business owners need ideas for growing top line sales (Eureka! Research). 83% of categories are becoming commodities i.e. price is more important than brand (Copernicus). And, "new to the world" innovations are down 70% in the past 14 years (Product Development and Management Association).

FACT: Inventors are Desperate to See Their Ideas SHIP. 80% of inventions licensed by MIT never ship (Academy of Mgt. Journal). Only 1% of University technology disclosures ever ship (AUTM & independent data). Independent inventors face even more challenging odds. Invention marketing companies have low success rates. Based on their own published data - in one case 1,950 inventors paid fees and only 5 made a net profit. In another case 28,404 inventors paid and 3 made a net profit.

The Planet Eureka! Game Plan for Success is A.T.V.
Access, Translation, Valuation

Access #1: Provide One-on-One marketing of innovations to 340,000 Small Manufacturers

Research indicates Small Business start-ups are 10 times more successful executing innovations than corporations (SBA, Journal of Mkt. Research, Ranch Research). Our plan is to leverage the 1,600 MEP Network Experts to connect innovations to small companies. The MEP Network will provide one-on-one coaching on the selection, development and introduction of innovations to help companies grow.

Access #2: Enable VIP Access to Large Corporations, National Distributors & Retailers

Recently, corporations have started to turn to small companies for innovations. Procter & Gamble is very successful commercializing ideas from the outside through efforts they call Connect + Develop by teams like their P&G Futureworks group. With Planet Eureka! we will help FIND & FILTER ideas based on the quantitative standards of companies. Importantly, the MEP Network will help with this connecting of small companies to large company supply chains & distribution.

Access #3: Enable Companies to FIND Expert Inventors

Planet Eureka! is also designed to help business leaders find expert inventors who can solve technical challenges. The listings provide a painless method for identifying inventors with expert skills in the area of interest. In effect, the quality of invention listings provides an "audition" of inventor skills. Connect + Develop experts have found that even if the inventor in a related area doesn't know how to solve a technical challenge there is a good chance that they will know someone else who might be able to help.

Translation: List END USER product/service concepts that buyers can understand in 30 seconds

To create an effective marketplace we must translate technologies and inventions into the language that business people speak. This means translating the technology into written Product or Service concepts that detail the Overt Benefit, Real Reason to Believe and Dramatic Difference offered from the perspective of an end users. Research indicates the ideal is to write it such that a "12 year old" or one not skilled in technology can easily understand. With Planet Eureka! we've developed a "translation workshop" that teaches inventors how to explain their idea in the language that buyers can understand.

Valuation: Quantify sales potential & invention readiness so buyers can decide in 30 seconds

For an invention to be successfully commercialized requires that it be a proper fit with the needs of the developing company. To help companies quickly screen to identify "fit" Planet Eureka! provides quantitative idea screening, Invention Readiness Level, Proprietary Protection Rating and sales forecasts based on 4 different marketing support levels.

There is much to be done to take us from this soft launch to a full release in April 2009. If you'd like to be part of the adventure, subscribe to our newsletter. You could be invited to participate in a system trial or asked for feedback on options. In any case we'll keep you notified of what's happening.

Cheers

Doug Hall
Eureka! Ranch
Founder/CEO