Reprinted with permission from
Mass High Tech, Oct. 5-11, 1998, Page 7
by Judy Stringer

Most everyone hates those annoying and useless hand dryers located in restrooms across the country. You stand there wringing your hands for a drawn-out 30 seconds and they are still wet!

Improving these inelegant devices, however, is a formidable task. The heat of the air cannot be so high as to harm skin, and power requirements must stay within conventional boundaries.

Sounds like just the project for Invent Resources Inc. of Lexington.

"If it does not violate the law of physics, we will try it," said Sol Aisenberg, a partner at IR, who is, in fact, trying to create a better blow dryer.

IR is less a company and more of a think tank. Its four partners - Aisenberg, George Freedman, A. Ze'ev Hed and President Richard Pavelle - banded together six years ago as "Inventors For Hire," to collectively harness their expertise in the art of invention.

The grouping could not have happened at a better time. In recent years the severe downsizing at major corporations has forced companies to look outside their own R&D departments. They have begun to realize that it is often cheaper to outsource functions like new product design and development.

The partners boast about 100 patents between them and as many as 500 product inventions. Recently, IR developed a novel light technology with broad medical applications for a local company, which in turn has licensed it to other firms.

"We're generalists," said Pavelle. "We come from different backgrounds and together we can some up with an innovative solution for almost any sort of problem."

IR does not charge clients for the process of inventing. If it does come up with a solution, clients can pay $2,000 for a two-month option on the invention. But IR retains ownership of all its patented ideas and products. Royalties from licenses on those products is where IR hopes to make its gains.

"We were previously paid to invent," said Aisenberg. "Now we do the inventing at cost and if the client wants to use it, we will ... license it to him. Residual income is much better than just a salary."

In the past "the client" has been large companies seeking an improvement to an existing product and small businesses that want to create and introduce a whole new product. If for some reason a client withdraws from the project, IR keeps the invention rights, adds it to its growing inventory of creations and begins the task of marketing the innovation to other companies.

For instance, a project to build a better pencil sharpener was abandoned by Hunt Manufacturing Co. after a prototype of the improved product had been constructed by IR The group is now taking its concept, "silent sharper," to two of Hunt's competitors.

Some big-name past clients have included General Electric Co., Raytheon Corp., Velcro Group Corp. and Rubbermaid Inc. Products have spanned the spectrum of materials and physical, chemical and biological sciences, ranging from super-technical devices, like the Delta Singlet Oxygen Continuous Reactor, to improved sunscreens and better sealing gadgets for re-corking opened wine bottles.

For IR to take on a project, the client must prove that it has a means of marketing and distributing the product, which must also address a market bigger than $5 million. Yet many discoveries, like its recently developed ultraviolet light technology, can breed markets of their own.

The light technology was originally developed for Boston-based Light Sciences Inc., which is researching the effects of controlling circadian cycles in humans. (Circadian cycles are biological variations or rhythms that occur on a 24-hour cycle).

Directed by Hed, the IR team came up with a technology that would use the same amount of photons as normal ultraviolet light, but without the heat that naturally accompanies UV light. It licensed the discovery to Light Sciences. Interested in using the technology only for circadian research, that company has sold the rights to use it in other medical applications to an unnamed third party, which in turn has recently granted a new company, Light Therapies Inc. of Nashua, N.H., a license to use it in treating psoriasis.

Light Therapies is now raising $1 million in seed money to fund the development of small disposable "adhesive" light patches.

Currently, patients suffering from acute psoriasis must undergo UV treatments in a clinic. Hed believes a disposable patch that can be used at home will be a tremendous advantage for patients. Moreover, since photons are already well understood, the product will not have to undergo clinical trials to gain FDA approval and could be on the market in a short time.

"This is a good example of the kind of work we like to do," said Hed. "It's gratifying to see our inventions come to life."

The company's website is found at www.weinvent.com.