Patent No. 5,524,641: An Inventor's Story

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One of the most established inventors groups happens to be in Santa Rosa, the town where Battaglia lives. The not-for-profit Idea to Market Network -- or ITM for short -- is run by Steve Schneider, who would like to perfect a model for teaching the invention process in Santa Rosa and then take it national. Battaglia pays dues of $50 a year to ITM on top of a $15 door charge at each monthly meeting. For that fee he gets to hobnob with the creators of a variety of items, including anti-skid tile flooring, an inflatable canoe, a shrimp deveiner, and the Loot Scoop, a plastic paw attached to a trick-or-treating sack. That last item, which Oprah once brandished during an appearance on the Tonight Show, garners sales of $2 million a year.

On a cool Saturday morning, I meet Art and Sharon Battaglia at their apartment to accompany them to an ITM meeting, at which Art is unveiling his very first prototype -- a knee pad with a geodesic grid cut into it. A mold maker he met at the group did the one-off job for only $500. Battaglia hopes to use this week's gathering as a focus group, and he'll ask the attendees to complete a survey printed on tiny slips of paper. He is excited and anxious, which leads him to reproach Sharon, an artist, when she takes too long to select a red-suede jacket to wear. "You look like you're going on a hot date, not to some hillbilly-inventors meeting," he says.

"I don't have a hillbilly coat," she replies girlishly.

The couple moved to Santa Rosa from San Francisco two years ago to escape soaring Russian Hill rents. Sharon chose their new place because, though a bit small, it overlooked a pasture where horses were kept. But then, eight months after they moved in, the horses disappeared and a developer broke ground on a new complex. In their early days in Santa Rosa, Sharon was ill and didn't work, straining the couple's finances. "We've had our struggles as a married little family here on essentially one income," Battaglia says. Still, Sharon is unfailingly supportive of his invention work.

We go outside and come to a large, executive-looking Chrysler that's painted jade green and upholstered in rich ebony leather. Battaglia's day job is managing a Thrifty rental-car office on the freeway that runs through the city. As a manager, he can get a good car for a special occasion like today's. We hop in and drive across town to a one-story office building. In the parking lot is a sandwich-board sign with the word "Inventors" above an arrow pointing to the entrance.

The meeting is already under way, and Schneider is busy stamping out any furtiveness. A Name-tag Nazi with the silky voice of a radio announcer, he compels participants to introduce themselves and their inventions. Each month ITM draws anywhere from 40 to 80 participants. The group's members are pretty diverse. There are farmers and athletic preppy types and women in business suits and people with foreign accents and even a few people with unkempt hair and long fingernails, thus reviving the old inventor stereotype. Battaglia points to two refined older gentlemen sitting in the front row and identifies them as millionaires. In contrast, another guy has endured two hours on a bus to attend. He has recently sold his car and hocked his wristwatch to raise research-and-development money. One man has a small child in tow -- I wonder if he has a weekend-custody deal.

Schneider introduces John Christensen, a longtime entrepreneur who has spoken to inventors groups in Sacramento, Santa Clara, and Paso Robles, and founded one of his own that meets in Manteca, Calif. Christensen is an elfin man in his fifties clad in a polo shirt bearing the logo of his company, Sandpiper Technologies Inc. His wife and collaborator, Ann, is in the audience. John has earned patents for anticounterfeiting technology, an indoor wind chime, and a camera used by wildlife biologists to see into the nests of endangered bird species.

Although a few of the older salts in the room occasionally interrupt Christensen's talk, everyone else is mesmerized. They nod when he says, "One percent of invention is invention -- any idiot can have a great idea. What matters is what you do with it." And they scribble in their pads when Christensen tells them how best to manage themselves. It's easy to become frustrated in a business world that often rejects innovation, he admits. "I recommend that you work on three projects at any given time. If you work on one project and focus on it, you lose perspective. If you work on two, you constantly ask yourself, 'Which one should I work on?' But if you have three going, the most wonderful thing usually happens: one of them turns out to be a success," he says. "And it's usually the one you least expect."

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Mike Hofman

Mike Hofman was previously editor of Inc.com and a deputy editor at Inc. magazine, which he joined in 1996. The site was nominated for a National Magazine Award for Digital Media in 2010, and was named the best business website by Folio Magazine. In 2006, Hofman was part of a team of writers nominated for a Webby Award for best business blog. He lives in New York City.

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