Inventors, don’t give up too soon. Piccirillo labored for eight years before she found the right company because she believed so strongly in the benefits of her invention. Talk about determination! Licensing success takes time and patience. There are no overnight success stories.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Correction: The last name of Tranquilo Soothing Mat inventor Melissa Gersin was misspelled in an earlier version of this article.<\/em><\/p>\nThis article was originally published on Inc.com.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"excerpt","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","filesize_raw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[924,927,923,926,925,928,746],"table_tags":[],"ppma_author":[981],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","pp_force_visibility":null,"pp_subpost_visibility":null,"pp_inherited_force_visibility":null,"pp_inherited_subpost_visibility":null,"authors":[{"term_id":981,"user_id":3,"is_guest":0,"slug":"stephen-key","display_name":"Stephen Key","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/inventright.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/SK-BW-No-Tie.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/inventright.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/SK-BW-No-Tie.jpg"},"user_url":"","facebook":"","twitter":"","instagram":"","linkedin":"","youtube":"","tiktok":"","first_name":"Stephen","last_name":"Key","author_expertise":"Intellectual property strategy, product licensing, and entrepreneurship.","description":"Stephen Key is an award-winning inventor, renowned intellectual property strategist, lifelong entrepreneur, author, speaker, and columnist.\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nStephen has over 20 patents in his name and the dozens of concepts he has brought to market have retailed in Walmart, 7-Eleven, and Disney stores and parks worldwide and been endorsed by Michael Jordan, Alex Trebek, and Taylor Swift. He has defended his patents in federal court against the largest toy company in the world, Lego\u2019s.\r\n\r\nIn 1999, he cofounded inventRight to teach others his unique process for harnessing the power of open innovation and the licensing business model.\u00a0\r\n\r\nHis bestselling book about how to license an idea,\u00a0One Simple Idea\u00a0by McGraw-Hill, has been translated into six languages.\u00a0\r\n\r\nHe has written more than 1,000 articles about intellectual property strategy, product licensing, and entrepreneurship for publications online including\u00a0Forbes,\u00a0Inc., and\u00a0Entrepreneur.\r\n\r\nUniversities and governmental organizations around the world regularly invite him to teach them inventRight\u2019s unique processes for commercializing new product ideas.\u00a0\r\n\r\nStephen has won over 20 industry awards, including two Edison Awards and the Most Influential and Inspiring Leader Of All Time by the WorldIP Forum in 2022.\u00a0\r\n\r\nIn 2018, he was recognized as a AAAS-Lemelson Invention Ambassador. In 2020, he became a founding member of the United States Intellectual Property Alliance.\u00a0\r\n\r\nIn 2022, Stephen contributed to \u201cCases in IP Strategy: Industry Lessons Learned\u201d from the non-profit Michelson Institute for IP.\r\n\r\nCurrently, he\u2019s part of the team responsible for launching a new sustainable packaging innovation that replaces the need to use plastic to carry beverages called Fishbone."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inventright.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9257"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inventright.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inventright.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inventright.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inventright.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inventright.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11684,"href":"https:\/\/inventright.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9257\/revisions\/11684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inventright.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inventright.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inventright.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9257"},{"taxonomy":"table_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inventright.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/table_tags?post=9257"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inventright.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=9257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}