That’s right, even a high school student or a university freshman can make it as an inventer, albeit more likely with the help of an organization or venture capital. Some notable inventors had made it big during their college years, like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg.
Even at a very young age, parents and educators should encourage kids to experiment and tinker around, using their imagination to put ideas into fruition. You won’t expect ground-breaking ideas, but it is the experience that counts and may transfer over into adulthood.
Having The Supplies
A set of tools is always handy for the general student inventor, but the modern equivalent would be having Raspberry Pi/ARM development boards, JTAG connectors, 3D printers, and a laptop loaded with industrial software.
Nowadays, these items are not that expensive, so most parents or school districts don’t have much of an excuse to not provide them. Even used, outdated hardware is quite useful for educational purposes, so it’s not a matter of buying retail.
Groups or Clubs
If there is anything that won’t make a student give up on their invention ideas, it may help to be surrounded by like-minded people. This can be done at your school’s robotics team, science club, or even seeing if there is a local MeetUp for aspiring inventors.
Learning the Process
It’s important to learn early on how patents work so you can sprout your ideas with their patent viability in mind. The very first thing you should do is check out the USPTO website to search for patents that may be similar to what you had in mind.
Secondly, it would be helpful to figure out how to draft a patent. There are common legal to pitfalls, as well as general knowledge in defending intellectual property. The USPTO sometimes holds workshops around the patent process, free of charge.
It can be quite surprising the amount of waiting and litigating it takes to get a patent filed. Typically, the first patent filed isn’t an economic success, but the experience is quite valuable and often leads to further successful patents in the future.
Mentorship
As an early inventor, it would be quite useful to have a mentor for the invention, patenting, and business-related processes. Thanks to the internet, it’s even easier to connect with more experience inventors, as well as requesting help from experience companies or organizations designed for the independent inventor.
The future had always, and will always depend on the ability of inventors to perpetuate their ideas, so students should always be encouraged to innovate. The yearning to learn in young minds can lead to imaginable things, and who knows what problems young innovators will solve.