Anthony raised some interesting points, and clued us all in to some current trends in product design. Anthony’s lessons:

1. Don’t wait for your idea to be “perfect”. You’ll never get there, and while you’re busy perfecting, you’ll probably miss your market opportunity.

2. Prototype early. Your prototype need not be complicated. We all made paper models of the ideal wallet tonight. Paper was an excellent medium–it was easy to see new innovations (flip-out card holders, superslim styles, mini-organisers, etc.), and to get an idea of what it would be like to use such a wallet.

3. Business ideas are easy to find–ask anyone you know. Anthony pointed out to us that we’d all come up with a new innovation tonight just by talking to someone else about their problems. In this case, our conversation was restricted to their complaints about their wallets, but even that limited conversation contained plenty of fodder for innovation. Anthony said, “ideas don’t come out of thin air.” It was a nice reminder that a creative mind can find fuel for a business idea in many of the people, objects and systems around them.

I gave another brief Prezi presentation tonight too. I find it’s much faster to knock up a quick presentation in Prezi than in PowerPoint. Here it is.

You can click on “more” to view the presentation in full screen. I’ve also enabled free exploration of the presentation, so you should be able to fly anywhere you like and click on any of the links to find out more.

As always, the next point of call if you have any questions is to check out the LAUNCH.ed website.