Episode 1: On creativity and Innovation

Mel Rosenberg I think that foolishness is the mother of invention. It’s this childish wonder at the world just noticing things and making mistakes. I teach my students that clever people learn from mistakes but the very clever people patent them.

Ilanit Appelfeld You are listening to Professor Mel Rosenberg inventor of the famous double face mouthwash now sold by Colgate. It is interesting to hear from Mel as someone
who has invented. Patented, sold and saw his product go from invention to market what he thinks about patents. When we think about protecting technology we often think of patents and I feel that not enough emphasis is being given to other forms of intellectual property protection trade secrets for example. I think that we need to be creative enough also in choosing the right way to protect our product. When we talk about innovation we usually think success. So it is also interesting for me to hear Mel talk about the number of times that he had failed and the importance of feeling a spark of his success. So lets have some innovation time with Mel Rosenberg.

Ilanit Appelfeld Hi Mel I’m very excited that you’re here. I’m excited. Thanks for coming. It’s my great pleasure. Let me introduce you to our listeners.

Mel Rosenberg Hi listeners.

Ilanit Appelfeld You manage the Ketter Innovation Center at Shenkar college in Ramat Gan, you invented the famous double phased mouthwash which was sold to Blistex and then sold to Colgate in the UK. You teach creative thinking and entrepreneurship skills in Shenkar. You’re a professor of microbiology Tel Aviv University. You’re a musician and also a children’s book writer.

Mel Rosenberg I’m primarily a children’s book writer but I’m not discovered yet.

Ilanit Appelfeld And lately I’ve heard that you have been approached by one of the incubators with a request to be their innovation expert.

Mel Rosenberg I can’t deny that but I’m not going to confirm it either.

Ilanit Appelfeld Well let’s just dive in.

Mel Rosenberg Dive away.

Ilanit Appelfeld How do you decide if and when to file a patent application.

Mel Rosenberg So of course not all ideas need to be patented. Not all ideas can be patented and not all ideas should be patented. I think that if you have a chance of licensing of of making a deal with a large company within a very small period of time less than a year then it’s a good idea to protect your intellectual property. If you’re starting out it might not be a good idea because that year or a year and a half or two years or three years it passes very very quickly and then you’re asked to spend tens of thousands of dollars sometimes more are protecting an idea that you may not ever sell.

Mel Rosenberg Yes but when you’re a small company you don’t know what your product is going to be. Right. And then you have then very often the claims in your original patent are not the claims that you want to protect. Right. This has happened to me.

Ilanit Appelfeld So your advice would be wait as much as you can in filing your patent until at least you know what your product is or at the very least you know what you want to license out.

Mel Rosenberg Well there’s there’s always a dilemma because you can’t tell anybody about your or your invention if you haven’t patented it yet or you shouldn’t perhaps. And if you don’t tell anybody how are you going to market sell it to license it and so on. Right. So there’s a there’s a dilemma here especially for small companies. Right. The other problem as I see it is even if your knowhow is protected and you get a patent and somebody infringes as a small company what are you going to do. Exactly. Because suing a large company can cost five million dollars more. And usually they find ways to bankrupt you during the process. Absolutely. So again for a small company I think it’s only valuable if in the short term you see yourself licensing the invention selling the company connecting with a very large Goliath who’s going to protect you down the line.

Ilanit Appelfeld But what about investment processes I mean venture capitalists investments angels. They want to see the patent pending. They want to see the status report including a few patents pending.

Mel Rosenberg Sometimes this is a mistake. If you’re an investor and you’re looking at some young people who have applied for a patent. So what. So. Right. I’m not a I’m not a big fan of that because the young people are going to pivot and the ideas are going to change and they’re going to morph over time. And maybe they haven’t had the best advice before they got to you.

Ilanit Appelfeld I think that when the technology is strong and the patents don’t drive the investment process you’re right that the maximum position should be a provisional that may not be carried forward and can be buried.

Mel Rosenberg I’m a believer in provisionals. So I would say the following If the investor sees the ability to turn this around in other words if he or she has a company to which he can turn to say he would have but keep a couple of young guys with this amazing IP.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right.

Mel Rosenberg And then if you can do about that turnaround within a year’s time or so then. Yes.

Ilanit Appelfeld Mm hmm. I know that you teach creative thinking oral presentations and pitches you know all about presentation and you’re an amazing public speaker yourself is
creativity is something that you can actually teach. I mean you can teach the presentation you can teach you know the way the product needs to be positioned but can you really teach creativity.

Ilanit Appelfeld Well when I started giving courses on creative thinking with Dr. Alon Amit it’s already 13 years ago. The president of the college where I was teaching he said Well can you teach creativity. And I said I really don’t know. That’s why I want to give the course. So there’s two answers. The first is it depends how you define creativity. Some people might define it as something innate or inherent in which case you cannot teach it. But for me it is something that you can develop and I think that you can teach a lot of skills that enable people to be more creative.

Ilanit Appelfeld Such as for example.

Mel Rosenberg Well we we teach them that creativity is a two step process. Most people teach only the second step which is problem solving. You have a problem. You want to build a bridge. How are you going to build it. Cheapest and best and fastest. Or I’m bald. I need a some. Something to keep my head warm during the winter but a lot of inventors
don’t work like that. They start with the first step which is not having a problem that you know about coming up with a problem. The two minutes ago we did not do this. And so
how do you generate problems. How do you generate new ideas. And this is what we create. We concentrate on in our courses because this is less taught and it’s more difficult.

Ilanit Appelfeld So it is a necessity the mother of invention as they say or they create.

Mel Rosenberg No I think that I think that foolishness is the mother of invention.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right.

Mel Rosenberg It’s this childish wonder at the world and just noticing things and making mistakes. I teach my students that clever people learn from mistakes but very clever people patent them and you know from your experience that most discoveries most inventions most patents are not something that are necessarily anticipated. You know I was mixing the green and yellow and I’m expecting blue. But it turned out to be red right.

Ilanit Appelfeld Could you take us to that inventive moment in your company in your product that you’ve managed. I mean it’s rare that an inventor manages to be there from the moment of conceiving the idea inventing, it turning it into a product patented patenting it selling it. It’s exceptional because you know most most of the people are there during some part of the process but then they’re just thrown out at some stage and they’re not there to see you know to see what comes out of it. And in your case which is I think why you’re still in this ecosystem because you’re an amazing coach I’ve seen you I’ve seen you with companies. I’ve seen the way you lead them and it’ll be really interesting to hear how. What was it for you that that inventive moment of. Well tell us a bit about that.

Mel Rosenberg Well again it’s mostly discovery. It’s mostly noticing things that are different. So for me it was an experiment when the bacteria disappeared so I could have just said OK. The bacteria disappeared maybe they dissolved maybe I don’t know. Maybe they went home for the evening and then tried to take the step of looking in the microscope and seeing exactly what happened to them or adding a blue color to our mouthwash and discovering that actually stained the debris and then discovering that the blue color was a biological stain. And then taking credit for it. So a lot of inventors they take a credit postdoc. Yes. Yes I knew that. I knew that of course. But a when you get to a certain age you realize that it’s more fun talking about the failures and not taking credit for anything except being obstinate and noticing things.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right.

Mel Rosenberg So I’m a very obstinate person. So yes I did stick with this from the moment that it was discovered in the 1980s until ballistics secured a license actually they bought the British company in 2007 and now Colgate is manufacturing the mouthwash in the States. And I’m still here and I’m still interested.

Ilanit Appelfeld Amazing.

Mel Rosenberg Why why shouldn’t they be but the other thing is that at some stage if you’re lucky you meet up with people who know how to manufacture your invention how to market it how to protect it how to advertise it and then you become second tier you you and you move to the backburner and they phone you when they need you.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right. Yeah I’ve seen this with some of my clients. So if we go back. Going back to something you said if if for our listeners we can transform this it into a practical tip. Then my question would be at what stage of the product development do you think a company should consider filing the IP. I mean yes we spoke about the provisional but you know converting it into a utility patent application and you know getting married as we say.

Mel Rosenberg Well if it’s an Internet company perhaps never.

Ilanit Appelfeld No I totally agree.

Mel Rosenberg If it’s a tech not technology company then I think at this stage where you have a good idea what your product is going to look like. Right. And what you want to protect. We’ve had this discussion. Our first patent on the two faced mouthwash. Not only did it not protect what we wanted to sell in the end. But it actually almost prevented us from getting a second patent which was the relevant one. Because the first one became the prior art against which the second one was judge.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right. Right.

Mel Rosenberg So it’s over. It’s important have a very good idea of what your technology is. If you’re protecting a product such as we were of an oil water mouthwash that the first claim should be oil and we miss that. So yes. And of course this is difficult because nobody knows exactly what the product is going to look like.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right.

Mel Rosenberg And I had one patent which I never told you about that. We got a patent on the first run. In other words there was never any opposition from the patent office and we got the US patent first try. Someone ask you now should have been very happy or very sad.

Ilanit Appelfeld To get the first patent without a proper examination.

Mel Rosenberg Now we have the examination he said OK this is new this is unanticipated. Here’s your U.S. patent. Excellent question. There was. Were you revealing too much in one patent.

Mel Rosenberg No we didn’t. In other words that patent went through first time.

Ilanit Appelfeld Excellent.

Mel Rosenberg There was no it was a lousy patent.

Ilanit Appelfeld Oh I see.

Mel Rosenberg Because the claim the first claim was so restrictive that it was new it was an obvious. But somebody else came the next year and wrote another patent and filed another invention that used ours and we didn’t have the foresight to have a claim which was very general.

Ilanit Appelfeld All right.

Mel Rosenberg Which would probably have been rejected the first first time round.

Ilanit Appelfeld That’s always a challenge.

Mel Rosenberg Because our patent was too narrow. So we got the path and brain problem. We didn’t protect ourselves enough and then somebody else came and invented something based on our patent. It wasn’t in our patent. We couldn’t sue him. And he actually sold his invention to the same company was marketing ours.

Ilanit Appelfeld Unbelievable. So in that example getting a patent quickly was a bad sign.

Mel Rosenberg Yes, but I didn’t see it at the time.

Ilanit Appelfeld Is that there is always a challenge between finding a patent that is not too wide. We always say you know don’t be too greedy because it can backfire in the examination. But at the same time don’t be too narrow because then you’re protecting very narrowly. You have a you know the scope of the patent is not as strong as it could be.

Mel Rosenberg Yeah. But if it’s a provisional you can afford to be wide.

Ilanit Appelfeld Of course.

Mel Rosenberg I would. In retrospect looking back at my career and all my failures and my once in a blue moon successes, go for the wide.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right.

Mel Rosenberg I mean again.

Ilanit Appelfeld If you know provisional you have nothing to lose anyway but.

Mel Rosenberg If you’re a startup you don’t want the examination to go back and forth too many times each time it cost thousands of dollars.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right.

Mel Rosenberg But that’s not a bad thing. You have the money.

Ilanit Appelfeld I’ll tell you what. In litigation the more times you go back and forth with the Examiner, the more you give up on your I mean the more aspects you need to. You admit what you’re not inventive.

Mel Rosenberg Yes, But if we’re talking about a small company.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right.

Mel Rosenberg And I only have experience with small companies you don’t want to reach the situation where you’re in litigation.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right. No absolutely.

Mel Rosenberg Litigation we were one of our patents was challenged by a multinational and the company went broke.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right.

Mel Rosenberg You’re trying to fight off this humongous monster of a company.

Ilanit Appelfeld I guess there were no litigation funders at the time and no patent trolls. Right?

Mel Rosenberg But it wouldn’t have helped us that much, because well it might have. But this is like 20 years ago.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right. So, as an inventor and prolific at that what would you say is the most common mistake inventors are companies do in their interaction with their patent attorneys.

Mel Rosenberg Pay them. It’s very expensive. And for startups it can be onerous. So you have to be careful not wasting patent attorney’s time. I guess that’s my best advice.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right. Okay. But about companies who need the handholding I mean we do some kind of a forum. It’s called An Idea disclosure form. We send it to the companies we say whenever you have an idea. Just put all you know all your ideas into this form. We’ll do the well you know we’ll value. We’ll look at it. We’ll examine it well maybe do a patent search. Would that be a good tip to sign.

Mel Rosenberg I think that that’s a great tip. I certainly benefited over the years by having great relationships with my patent attorneys particularly Ben “Benjamin Bae -r bearish right. To whom I owe a great deal because at the beginning you could always come to him and talk about your idea.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right.

Mel Rosenberg And if the patent attorney has a lot of experience as you do it’s invaluable to get this.

Ilanit Appelfeld Absolutely. And as someone who has been part of a large corporation do you think incentivizing research to file suggestions for new patents what we call idea disclosures for them. You know it’s above and beyond their paycheck. Do you think that will help companies innovate.

Mel Rosenberg It’s it’s a good question. Here in Israel as an employee of a company anything that I invent automatically belongs to them. So if it turns into a big problem you know if I’m an employee. I’m getting a salary and I’m not particularly happy. Why should I go the extra mile and invent things.

Ilanit Appelfeld Because it would give you status and you would have a packed under your name although nothing economically rights to it. But but the academical credit the prestige that comes with it. Here in you’re an inventor. I mean and as you know in the U.S. the right of inventorships is it is a right that you.

Mel Rosenberg Well Ilanit unless you work at a company that thrives on innovation loves innovation. It’s not going to work. We’re not talking about Google and Apple and so on we’re talking about you know American Motor Company if there is such a thing or you know a generic a big company.

Ilanit Appelfeld Well let’s talk about Israeli startups. You know a startup.

Ilanit Appelfeld I want to talk about a big company.

Ilanit Appelfeld OK.

Mel Rosenberg Big companies are actually against innovation. They punish innovation. They don’t support innovation but they say they do. And there’s a reason that they do because it’s much easier to keep manufacturing what you’ve been manufacturing for the past 50. And for them innovation might be changing the color are changing the size of the product. And in my experience when I give a talk on innovation at a company it’s more fun. It’s like hiring somebody to speak about you know the history of Turkish delight. I tell him nothing valuable is going to happen after my talk. I will tell you what I think innovation is all about. You’re not going to listen to me. So let’s just have fun.

Ilanit Appelfeld All right.

Mel Rosenberg Bark for an hour and then go home.

Ilanit Appelfeld All right. OK. We’ve seen that in Israel live. We’ve never managed to actually create incentives to file patents for the sake. I mean there’s always more important things going on. There’s always the next round to to you know to prepare for.

Mel Rosenberg So I think in most companies the inventors are not priced. Quite the contrary. They’re seen as weirdos. And very often they’re passed over. The only reason that I succeeded is because I was a university professor and at the university there was a deal where if you patented something and it succeeded the university would give your laboratory some of the money they would give you and your family some of the money. And this was a real incentive. But even even at a place like Tel Aviv University if I look at the whole university right there against innovation they’re against patents they’re against inventors.

Ilanit Appelfeld Really!

Mel Rosenberg Yeah I can tell you many discussions that I had with senior university people where the inventors were seen well not as pariahs but as kind of weirdos that didn’t deserve.

Ilanit Appelfeld All right.

Mel Rosenberg The fortune and fame that they were receiving because they weren’t doing basic research.

Ilanit Appelfeld Ilanit Appelfeld Well I’m very surprised to hear that.

Mel Rosenberg Mm hmm. But on the other hand it was an environment in which I could succeed because I was publishing basic papers that went into my CV.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right.

Mel Rosenberg And patents that didn’t go in. So I have this like dual citizenship at Tel Aviv University.

Ilanit Appelfeld How long.

Mel Rosenberg It has patent protection for the next year. Just by happenstance.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right.

Mel Rosenberg Everywhere else in the world the patents have expired ages ago. So if you’re working on something that people are going to use like a cosmetic or drug or whatever the patent life is just not enough.

Ilanit Appelfeld Absolutely. Yeah.

Mel Rosenberg So yes absolutely hasn’t been taken. I mean look if you’re the big drug company right you’re finding patents all the time. What you do for a living.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right there are CIP’s of this strategy is on.

Mel Rosenberg But and then. But if you’re a small company and you’re working on something that’s pharma or cosmetic or or food it can take forever to get a product and you’re like you can have your product like go to market two years before the patent expires.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right. The statistics are amazing. I mean if we look back to the history of several patents that we know of. I’m sure there are some patents that you know by the time they were granted the marketing strategy if not have even kicked off.

Mel Rosenberg I would and also we need to remember that very few patents succeed. Maybe some people say one in 100 at most. So if you’re a company that’s OK if you’re big company if you’re a startup, it’s kind of daunting. But you know MY BEST STUDENT WHO’S MY SON alongside my daughter once asked me he said “Dad why should anybody invent anything?” There’s probably almost 9 million U.S. patents that I’m not following.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right. Yeah. Closer to 10…

Mel Rosenberg It hasn’t hasn’t. Everything’s been invented on. And I said to them Well here’s the thing. Every patent has somebodies name on it. Right. So that’s the first thing you could be that person. And the strange thing is that every year there aren’t less U.S. patents. There’s more. So the more that gets invented the more there is less left to invent. So I think it’s wonderful to be an inventor. But it’s akin to to wanting to be a tennis player on the ATP or a professional musician. Yes, you should go for it. It keeps you young and keeps you vibrant. It’s fun. It’s great. But chances are you you’re going to fail. And I think I failed. I don’t know maybe a hundred times. You know I’m here in this wonderful discussion with you because I succeeded once.

Ilanit Appelfeld Right.

Mel Rosenberg And that was all happenstance.

Ilanit Appelfeld So let’s touch the topic of trade secrets. I’m in love with trade secrets.

Mel Rosenberg And you should be. I thought you were in love with your husband and your children.

Ilanit Appelfeld We meet a lot of companies that have these ideas for patents and we end up advising listen. It’s very crowded prior art. Filing a patent reveals the invention publishes is in 18 months. If you converted to a utility patent application.

Mel Rosenberg And now you have to say what you’re doing really!

Ilanit Appelfeld Keep it as a trade secret.

Mel Rosenberg Yeah,.

Ilanit Appelfeld It’s not always the right way to go but if it’s something that’s not easily reverse engineered you’ll have no motivation to file it as a patent. Write it down as a patent. Don’t file it. Keep it as a trade secret and manage it as a trade secret.

Mel Rosenberg Yes I think that that is wonderful. And it’s even better alongside the provisional. So if you have a trade secret that you don’t reveal and a provisional that you do. If you can protect some of that and save some of it at home. I think that would be the best bet.

Ilanit Appelfeld Yeah absolutely. But we spoke about your future plans that you were unwilling to reveal what they were and obviously you are going to work with companies in their innovation process. So what next Mel.

Mel Rosenberg So first of all as you know my dream is to be an acknowledged children’s writer. So I wake up every morning and I go to work at 7:00 and before anybody comes to the office I spend two hours writing. That is the mountain I’ve never succeeded in climbing. So I don’t think that that’s relevant for me to be an inventor now. But I love people and I love young people I like working with small groups of startups and and trying to help them express themselves and to have fun because it’s all about the journey and I had a marvelous journey fortunate one. And I want to share with young people the fun of coming up with new ideas. The excitement the exhilaration. You know what it is right to sit with Blistex this bunch of attorneys in a huge room in England and to sign documents and to have something that started out as a silly little experiment on your bench turned into a product that sold in many countries. It’s so exciting.

Ilanit AppelfeldAbsolutely.

Mel Rosenberg But even the ones that blew up on the way are no less fun and I want to share that my love my passion for coming up with quirky ideas. That’s what I’m going to do.

Ilanit Appelfeld Yeah. I’m really glad that you left Canada will be in Israel.

Mel Rosenberg That was also a quirky idea.

Ilanit Appelfeld Sure let’s share the knowledge or in your experience I think you’re a great great contribution to the Israeli ecosystem and I’m really glad that you’re here.

Mel Rosenberg Well I’m grateful but I can only tell you that Israel is a country that enables weirdos like me to thrive and to grow and to develop. It’s a country that has well maybe especially some parts of the country. I don’t want to get into politics but for example here right in Tel Aviv it’s one of the best places in the world to be different.

Ilanit Appelfeld You wouldn’t be writing children’s books if you know.

Mel Rosenberg In Canada they wouldn’t look at it well.

Ilanit Appelfeld I get it. Thank you so much for coming. Really excited. That you’re here.

Mel Rosenberg I’m excited too and when’s lunch.