As the old Christmas tree stands outside, once proudly brimming with needles and joy, but now naked and threadbare, we bid farewell to the yuletide festivities and enter a new age.

Twenty-twenty. 2020. Two thousand and twenty. However you write it, it feels like we are living in the future! We have now reached an age that was once looked upon as the epoch of technological fulfilment. Alas, this hasn’t come to pass and still I wait enviously for my Back To The Future hoverboard and Star Trek teleporter.

Of course, there have been many technological advancements made over the decades. It is still mind-blowing to think that almost all of us have a device in our pockets that effectively contains all human knowledge acquired over millennia (although I mainly use my own to watch videos of cats wearing clothes).

However, whilst indeed some inventions are earth-shatteringly advanced, most are relatively simple and yet still they enhance our lives. If you have found a novel way to solve a problem, congratulations, you are an inventor! Even in the more mundane areas of life like taking the bins out or shaving, there is the potential to develop new products that can help improve these experiences.

So, as we enter this new year and decade, maybe now should be the time we finally resolve to make our contribution to human advancement and develop our nascent ideas into something real. But where to start!?

Where indeed. It’s all very well having these ideas of how things can be made better and improved upon. But actually transforming this into a workable solution? That can be more challenging.

The good news is that help is available. Here at Innovate we offer a range of services that can assist inventors just like yourself to develop your idea, protect it and turn it into a successful product.

Often the starting point is to research the intellectual property that is already disclosed in the relevant fields. Beyond that are a range of design, patent protection, prototyping and business development routes that can help you get all the way to market.

So don’t sit on that idea any longer. Make it your new year’s resolution to take it forward! Don’t be that person who has a brilliant idea, does nothing with it but then sees a similar product really take off a few years down the line.

And if it feels daunting and you’d like a helping hand along the way, request an information pack for a free assessment and guidance on how to move forward.