and I absolutely agree. I mean I think
understanding, you know, that you can't do
it by yourself,
and success means a good
team.
You know, some of the business - you know
people, who come from the business world,
will say "Oh well I'm not creative I
can't think of any ideas
at all," and you talked a little bit about
observation and how you will use that.
Can you just tell me a little bit more
about that?
Yeah well first of all I think
that's a -
if somebody says they're not creative or
or what have you -
that doesn't make any sense. We are
all creative
okay. I don't know if
you're creative means
drawing - being able to draw a picture or
not. That's just a
skill that you can learn. Anybody can
learn that, but I think that
anybody has the ability to observe
like you just mentioned, and so
you -
you know it does - you know it can be
kind of fun to just
watch and see how people are going
through their lives.
You know I was noticing:
I went to - I got a COVID test the
other day,
and I got a - oh here look. I got this
thing here.
Oh, yeah! Yeah, right? How cool is this
little - this little thing, you know? It's
got this - this kind of
thing so you don't lose it, and it's like,
that's a cool idea right there.
This little piece, right? So
you can poke your
atm, cars, or your gas thing, whatever.
There's a little hook right here that
you can, I guess I think it's for like
opening a door maybe,
but somebody observed like, "Oh! We're hitting these buttons
with our fingers,"
and that's probably not a good idea
right now, and so you know, like okay.
What can we do to fix that? I know we'll
make a little -
probably I'm sure that somebody in their
kitchen or whatever you know
fashioned a little thing out of plastic.
Maybe they melted down a
ballpoint pen you know they started
using that,
and they brought it to the right, you know -
the right company that said,
"Oh we'll make these,"
and then that company - the
people in that company knew the right
connections to have that would go to WVU
and put their logo on there. They also
went to
Penn and put their logo on there. They
also went to Carnegie Mellon put their
logo on there, and to NC State and to
whoever else right? It's the same - it's
the same thing,
but it's that sales
guy had that
or the marketing people
or whatever those connections were there.
Certainly the designer who made this
thing right here didn't have those
connections,
but I'm sorry. Back to your
your question about
was observation. You know
I think that we tend to
go through life
in a world that's designed pretty well.
If you think about it,
how many light switches did you turn on
today?
Do you remember
any of them? You probably,
I would just, I kind of assume you to
say: "no." You don't remember any of those
light switches,
but yet you probably turned on 10 lights
11 whatever that is.
That thing works pretty good.
Some
some designs are like, "Wow,
they already got that
dialed in. That
works pretty well," but there's some things that don't work pretty
well,
and I think you can
kind of travel through
the world and just kind of see that
stuff you know.
I have a thing about
doors,
and the way door handles work.
So many of them don't
work very well. They're very
un-intuitive and you can't figure out -
sometimes you can't really - Am I supposed to push or pull,
turn? What is this
thing?
It's always kind of irked
me a little bit like I like door handles
don't work
you know and I'm also been very
conscious of them
you know certainly since COVID, but even
before that, like touching other people's
door handles, is kind of a little bit
gross,
but now that we can't -
we don't really want to touch
the door handles we have these things,
right, to do that for us.
Do these really help us with these
door handles,
or is there something better
than this? I mean this is a -
I don't know if this is going to help
here because some things you got to twist
and all those things - that's not going
to help me, but now
I have this. Now what am I supposed
to do with it? It doesn't work.
So you observe. You just have to observe
and see. There's a better idea than
this for sure, there is.
This is a good start, but there's -
there's definitely got to be something
better
here.
Observation is
critical for just about
anything.
Yeah, it's so
funny Craig that you brought that up too,
because you need sometimes like that
first -
that first item like the middle metal
key to sort of say, "Okay this is a good
first step.
Can we make it better?" Yeah, well
that's kind of like this. Is the first to
market?
How do we fix it? How do you make it
right? 
That's where I think - that's where
the gold is right there is to make it
better.
Granted this
this little key thing was given
away, right? If you have your - If you
got the testing. So I mean - I can't
imagine it cost very much to make that,
but there's
potential in something that will work
like that.
What a wonderful
time right now for design right?
In a world that is absolutely changed
and we have to address. - Right.
Things do change. Even
your light switch
that we don't think about that's
something we now have to think
about.
There's opportunity everywhere right
now.
So if you're
thinking of a business, if you're
a designer,
or it's something - something in this 
world here, it's just like, wow.
The opportunities could not be any
better. - It's absolutely true!
We think about how can we make
things different, you know, that are
COVID related,
but everything is open now.
Everything's changed, everything's open.
How do we communicate
now? How do we work safely, How do we get our food?
So you're absolutely right. If you want to be an
entrepreneur, if you want to create
something, invent something,
it's an amazing time. Yeah
it is, but you know
you just said
COVID related right? I think that's
where we got to be a little bit careful
when we're designing, because
ultimately, what you want is for
your design - your product to
last -
test the time, right? We don't know what what COVID is going to
do,
but let's just assume that maybe it's
not going to be around here forever
and the severity that it is now. You
still want your product to work,
right? Do you know that
there's a company called:
vegetable peelers and they make - it's
kitchen utensils.
O - X - O
That company was funded. It's a
universal design company that has
initially started to make products
for people who have issues with their
hands, right? They can't hold this
utensil.
So they made it more user-friendly
for people who have
some sort of
problem, but they never
marketed it that way.
It's just plain
good design.
So you can use it whether your hand
works or not.
We're not going to say, "Oh this
is for you weird people who have a
problem,"
or "This is for you people who don't have
a problem." So the people who don't have a
problem don't
need to feel like they are using
something that's
yuck. It's a
piece of medical device or -
but it's just not marketed
that way at all and, you know, it's just
plain good product.
Their vegetable peeler, that's kind of
their most famous product they have
in their line.
There's hundreds of pieces on their line. That's lasted -
it's been around for 20 years.
I have one, you know.
Yeah and my hands work reasonably well,
but even they didn't I
could probably use it
too. I think that, with
COVID itself, I think we need to just kind
of like,
just be a little cautious about:
how is it that we want
to utilize that. There's
a couple of different ways when you're
making or when you're selling product.
You got to think about:
are you on it now for the short run -
for the short term? Like, boom. I just need
to make as much money as I can quickly
because it's going to go away
or do you want to try to keep that thing,
like just a slow move
that goes for a long time. Both of them
are very legitimate.
Ultimately, if it's if it's about
money, I think the longevity one
is probably the better idea.
There's other
things that are trends right and
trends do - they come, they get hot
real quick and then they go.
If you're savvy enough to be
on trends -
to be on it - boom. Then you can you
can jump in and then jump out
real quick, but that could be a difficult
thing to do if you don't have the proper
setup.
To
have an idea get it made get it -
distribute it to the proper places get
it marketed right get it
sold and
without crumbling
from behind.
Hey Craig, thank you so much 
for sharing your thoughts. This is the
kind of information
that we really - that we really need,
because we're all facing how to
take an idea
and move it forward. So I really
appreciate your time.
