Inventor Inquiry
Before You Spend Another Dollar.
101 questions to help inventors challenge assumptions, find evidence, and make better decisions before spending more time or money.
What is Inventor Inquiry?
Inventing can be exciting.It can also be expensive.Before you spend more on prototypes, patents, manufacturing, marketing, packaging, tooling, websites, consultants, or anything else, there are questions worth answering first.Inventor Inquiry is a practical framework built around 101 of them.Some are obvious.Some are uncomfortable.Some may confirm that you're on the right path.Others may save you from spending money on the wrong one.The point is not to discourage invention.It is to help you make better decisions about what to build, protect, test, spend, and do next.
Start Where You Are
Follow Inventor Inquiry in Useful Ideas, one question at a time.Each article takes one of the 101 questions and looks more closely at what an inventor should know, test, prove, or reconsider before moving forward.SIGN UP BELOW AND...
The Q-Sheet
All 101 questions. One working document.
Keep it beside your project.Mark it up.Circle the questions you cannot yet answer.Revisit them as your invention develops.
The Workbook
The 101 questions, expanded.The Inventor Inquiry Workbook will add explanations, examples, exercises, evidence to gather, common mistakes to avoid, and space to work through your own answers.
(In development.)
The Workshops
Sometimes the best way to answer a difficult question is with other people in the room.Inventor Inquiry Workshops will bring inventors together to challenge assumptions, uncover gaps, compare experiences, and decide what to do next.
(First Sessions Coming Soon.)
Start with Question One
THE PROBLEM
What problem have you actually solved?
Inventors naturally focus on solutions.But before evaluating the invention, it helps to prove that the problem itself is real, meaningful, and important enough for someone to want solved.The absence of your solution is not evidence that anybody needs it.Inventor Inquiry begins one step earlier:Prove that the problem deserves the solution.
Before You Spend Another Dollar...
Ask yourself:What do I know?What am I assuming?What evidence do I have?Which unanswered question could change what I build, protect, spend, or do next?That is the purpose of Inventor Inquiry.Not to have every answer today.To know which questions matter before tomorrow gets expensive.
About David Alan Foster
David has spent much of his career working with inventors, entrepreneurs, designers, and emerging businesses.He founded Invent! Magazine and helped organize InvenTech, one of the early trade shows devoted to independent inventors and innovation.Today he publishes Useful Ideas and continues working with inventors, startups, and organizations developing products intended to make things work—and lives work—better.
GET THE 101 QUESTIONS
Before You Spend Another Dollar.
Start with the complete Inventor Inquiry Q-Sheet and follow the continuing series.
Contact
Inventor Inquiry is a project of Useful Ideas™. © 2026 by David Alan Foster
inventorinquiry.com
Thank You
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The Inventor Inquiry WorkBook
You’ve seen the questions. The Workbook will help you work through them.It expands the 101 questions with explanations, examples, exercises, evidence to gather, common mistakes to watch for, and space to develop your own answers.If you want more than a checklist — and want to think more clearly about what to build, protect, spend, or do next — this is for you.
Inquiry WorkShops
Some questions are easier to answer with other people in the room.The Workshops will be guided sessions for creative people who want help testing assumptions, finding gaps, comparing experiences, and deciding what deserves attention next.If you’d like to work through the hard questions with some structure, perspective, and conversation, let me know.