What It Takes to Be a Visionary Leader With Doug Patton of Patton Design

Intro (00:09):
Welcome to innovations and breakthroughs with your host Rich Goldstein, talking about the evolutionary, the revolutionary, the inspiration and the perspiration and those aha moments that change everything. And now here’s your host Rich Goldstein

Rich (00:33):
Rich Goldstein here, host of the innovations and breakthroughs podcast, where I feature top leaders in the path they took to create change past guests include Stephen Key Lewis foreman and Roland Frasier. This episode is brought to you by my company, Goldstein patent law, where we help you to protect your ideas and products we’ve advised and obtained patents for thousands of companies over the past 26 years. So if you’re a company that has software, a product or a design, you want protected go to Goldstein panlar.com, where there are amazing free resources for learning about the patent process. And you could email my team@welcomeatgoldsteinpc.com to explore if it’s a match to work together. You could also check out the book I wrote for the American bar association that explains in plain English, how patents work it’s called the ABA consumer guide to obtaining a patent I have here today. Doug Patton, Doug, um, is an inventor who’s created over 300 products in 20 international market categories and received over 150 patents and international design awards. Doug works with companies like Apple, Microsoft Disney, IBM, and Mercedes-Benz he’s been featured on Simon Cowles American inventor. It’s his mission to inspire others to live more authentic lives by sharing his unique creative problem solving process. It’s my pleasure to welcome here today. Doug Patten. Welcome Doug

Doug (01:51):
Rich, thank you for hosting this conversation and I hope it will energize and inspire, uh, many entrepreneurs and inventors to go forth and conquer new ideas and be creative. So where would you like us to begin rich? Where do you want to start our conversation?

Rich (02:10):
I think maybe we should start in high school. So you went to high school with Steve jobs, which thing that later led to you working with Apple. I think that’s a pretty good place to start.

Doug (02:21):
Yeah, well, I, you know, it, it starts even earlier because he lived about five houses down from me on in Chris drive in Los Altos. And, uh, there’s a lot of interaction with his family. And, uh, what was really, uh, an interesting little story is that we were in, uh, uh, uh, electronics class together, homestead high, had a great electronics lab, very unusual. And, uh, the instructor, uh, uh, kind of, this is not a pun, but his name was Mr. Cullo, which is a measure of, uh, of electricity. And he would, he would create Tesla coils where we were arking, uh, lengthening, uh, you know, uh, 20 feet into the air and it was very inspirational environment. But the only thing is, is that, you know, it took me a whole semester to make, uh, my am radio work. I think Steve did it in a week. His dad was an amazing, uh, electronic engineer, uh, already, and that had a big start. So even in those early days, he was coming in with lasers, he had built with his dad and, uh, a lot of people don’t realize that he was a great technical innovator. Um, but, uh, you know, as, as time went on, uh, there was, uh, a lot of things going on on Chris drive, including him starting in his garage. So there many, many more stories to tell, uh, that would take the whole podcast, but yeah, yeah,

Rich (03:51):
That I could imagine, but that’s fascinating. And, and so though, at some point you ended up working at Apple and, and, uh, you worked on the, the, um, Mac classic, which I had one of actually, when I started law law school, I bought one right before law school began. Um, and, uh, also the style writer and, uh, and some other products.

Doug (04:12):
Yeah. Uh, we worked on a lot of different things, including one that was really innovative workspace 2000 or after a while they asked me, Doug, do you want to just make more computer housings or do you want to look into the future of, uh, of where computers are going? And the guiding light that I talked about, uh, uh, also there’s some chapters in my book, content of the chaos of creativity about this is how can we develop, uh, information and communication in a way that AIDS in our classical way that we communicate with people as opposed to being on the ball and chain of, uh, T board and mouse. And so we created, uh, uh, they allowed me to go off and create this incredibly innovative system where the basis of many other products started, uh, uh, iPad and many other ideas that have yet to come to fruition, integrated micro components all the way into a complete environment. So, uh, we did a tremendous amount of innovation, uh, in that time for it. And, uh, eventually as you know, uh, the board of directors, uh, had, uh, had Steve job exit the company. And at that time, uh, there was a lot of, since they knew, I knew Steve, I was eventually, um, uh, predisposed to not that much work. And that’s when I moved over to, uh, Microsoft.

Rich (05:42):
Hmm. Got it. And so you went from Apple to Microsoft, is that a, it’s done a thing that happens often people move from Apple to Microsoft. It seems like, like that there must be a big Canyon between the two. Well, you know, me, it was,

Doug (05:58):
You know, uh, as, as, uh, an innovator, uh, God works in mysterious ways. And as it, as it happened in, uh, in the process, I was designing some, uh, projects there, uh, uh, at a very low level where we were, um, trying to create hardware to software and software and the hardware feeding some products and, uh, doing a presentation of some of my designs. And one of them, uh, that, uh, in, in the nineties was very prolific, was called, uh, the, uh, PRM one for Mitsubishi. It was a very simple remote that could control your TV. It’s about the size of a, of a pen. And it was probably the biggest selling product ever at Mitsubishi. And consumer companies usually, uh, have products that last six months, this lasted 10 years. But anyway, so I gave the presentation and a guy named [inaudible], who is very close with bill Gates said, Doug, you did this, you did this pen remote. And I said, yeah. And he goes, uh, uh, bill has been holding it up in front of us saying, why can’t you guys do something like this for my house? And that was my introduction. And to bill Gates, uh, he created a company called interactive home systems that, uh, was a company just working on his house. So I transferred there and had some incredible experiences, um, innovating, uh, for the Gates house.

Rich (07:26):
Wow. Awesome. And look, I mean, you have so many experiences with innovation and like, you know, you could, you know, if you wanted to name drop, you could name drop all day long. There’s just so many interesting places you’ve, you’ve worked at. And like you said, and people you’ve worked with, and like you said, we could spend the entire episode, probably 10 episodes talking about that. But what I’d love to talk about are some of the things that you’ve learned from, from being there and like, um, you know, so like, first of all, you worked with Steve jobs, um, and, uh, he is what most people would consider a visionary leader. Um, someone who, um, someone who really sees the direction of the company and has the capability of moving and leading the company toward that vision. And so I’m just curious, like what, what does it take to be a visionary leader?

Doug (08:19):
Well, first of all, uh, um, a visionary leader has to have a vision. It, there has to be a grand vision and it has to be, uh, based upon a found durational problem statement that, uh, is all encompassing and, and really well, uh, um, uh, uh, how do I say it, uh, um, innovated and in many aspects, but to be a visionary leader, you must have the Lang you must know many languages of invention. And we’re just like, uh, let’s say someone in the, uh, United nations who has to communicate in French and German and Russian and all these, you must be able to communicate in terms of electrical engineering, mechanical patents, marketing business, all the, uh, uh, areas that might, uh, be the tools to innovate in. So you must understand how all these disciplines integrate into one seamless vision that allows everyone in your company, everyone that you work with to be empowered, to get to where they want to go.

Doug (09:35):
I hazy vision. Okay. Some, a leader that doesn’t have a clear vision is we’ll create products that are unsuccessful that really don’t solve a problem. They’re creating a solution for a problem that is easy. So it all goes back to what I call a foundational problem statement. It’s like building a house. If you have a foundation for a house that is well done and well created, you can build, you know, a five story house and it will be fine. But if you have foundation that is not well orchestrated, whatever you build will be shaky. And that’s a slight little metaphor. I touch on it in my book, conquering the chaos of creativity. And that then is a process that you build it, but you must have integrated the right amount of information. And then what comes after that is the solution statement, how you synthesize out of the problem statement into a solution statement that is, uh, uh, uh, the right answer to the problem as I’ll quote Einstein. One of my favorite people who said once, if I have to solve an issue, and I only have an hour, I will spend 55 minutes on the problem statement and five minutes on the solution, because the solution is always contained in the correct problem statement. So that’s my, my take on visionary leader.

Rich (11:02):
Got it. And so then that’s the foundation, um, of, uh, that’s the strong foundation that you’re talking about is this, uh, is, is a, is a strong problem statement because I guess, I mean, you’ve said before that, that people create a solution without being really clear about the problem. And I think that’s what people invent is often fall into is a solution without a clear understanding of the problem. Yeah.

Doug (11:29):
Yeah. I think, uh, you know, in all my years of, uh, uh, of development and creativity, uh, one thing that has, uh, uh, become, uh, a very important part of my process is something that I call the creativity compass. It’s something where once you set your goals, and once you understand, uh, your, uh, your problem statement, your solution is how you stay on tech, how you, uh, don’t get off the, uh, the page to where you’re going. Quite often, when companies are developing ideas, they, they, they, they go left or right. They, they fall short of their Mark. And what you constantly have to do is refer back to what problems you’re solving. And one of the ways I talk about in solving problems is a thing called flow chart mapping, where you might think of their main problem. And then you might think of maybe a hundred other problems, okay.

Doug (12:31):
You have to ask every possible problem and question that you have, and then you start organizing, organizing them hierarchically. So then you start understanding what is the main problem? What are the sub problems? And it is something that sometimes you can do this in a couple hours. The one that took the longest was when I worked at the U S PTO and I, it took six months to create the problem statement where, uh, John Dudas, who was the director of the U S PTO at the time, uh, empowered me. And the way it happened was, is I joined and everyone else had, uh, a goal. And I said, I don’t know why I’m here. I was, uh, called to work here by, uh, Jim Sensenbrenner, who was, uh, the, uh, chief judiciary at the time. And I listened to people talk for like months. And I finally created this process of a 500 line Gantt chart of how we go about solving problems.

Doug (13:31):
Everyone ignored it. And John Dudas candies, Doug, you did this. I go, yeah, he goes, we’re implementing this. I said, well, what do you mean? I just came up with it. He goes, no, we’re doing exactly this. This is what we’re doing. And I said, well, I’m only consulting here. I only meet with you guys every three months and worked a couple hours a week. I said, normally on something like this, I need like five or 10 people because you’ve got, we’ll put, we’ve got people at the USPTA, we’ll start working with you. And what I did is I did what I always do. I talk to every stakeholder, even the people that don’t work with the patent department, the people, the special interest groups. And what I did is basically asked them, what are the problems that they see? And I found a common ground and I sent it out to everyone and they said, wow, we all agree.

Doug (14:23):
We found a common place to stand. And then I started a focus group that took two years that went to every, um, uh, let’s say, area of business education, um, from pharma to energy, to entertainment. And we created this process of where these are the things that the us PTO can implement without an, a congressional hearing. And these are the ones that can, and without getting into it, it was very successful. So what I’m trying to say is sometimes that problem statement takes a long, long time to do, and you cannot look at it as trivial. So hopefully I haven’t gone on too much about it, but I wanted to let everyone know how foundational it is and how it brings people together.

Rich (15:12):
Right. Well, I mean, um, it makes sense, like if Einstein said in an hour, um, outlook of allocated time, he’d spend 55 minutes on the problem statement. Then we should spend at least 28 out of the 30 minutes, this podcast talking about the problem statement

Doug (15:29):
I have. There’s a lot of, um, that I use, uh, I, uh, many, many techniques that, again, I have not to be pedantic about it, but in my book, I have a lot of techniques on how to develop it. It’s a really important process, uh, to, uh, to do

Rich (15:47):
Absolutely well, you know, let’s talk about patents. I mean, because it’s funny, like something that we have in common is that we both get excited about patents and, you know, I mean, people think patents is a really boring topic. Uh, I find it interesting. You’ve told me that you, that it’s exciting. So, um, yeah, I mean, let’s talk about, I know you have some frameworks about how you see the, the, the necessity of balance of like a patent ecology. Tell me more about that.

Doug (16:18):
Well, it’s, it’s, um, something that has been generated through, uh, I would say, uh, many, many companies startups, whether they’re small or, uh, startups within billion dollar companies. And it’s what I call the ecology of invention. And, uh, there’s three parts. Uh, there’s the patent, there is the invention and the business side. And the process is that all, all of them have to communicate and interrelate an example might be, let’s say, uh, uh, someone has invented something well, okay. That might be interesting. Now we take it into the patent world. What is the white space look like there? And if people don’t know what the white space is, this is the open area that you can patent. And you look at it and say, is this patentable, is this concept patentable, are there other adjoining ideas that could be equally patentable? And you have to really understand that landscape because again, a patent is the one foundational part that I call about freedom, where one person can stand against the largest corporation in the world.

Doug (17:35):
There might be a little litigation in there, but philosophically you are empowered. You are just as powerful as the largest corporation. And you have to understand that now you, you move that idea from the patent world to the business world. Is that something that meets the market requirements? I’ve done things where I I’ve worked on ways of mapping your eye, uh, down to the, the, uh, the smallest little, little particle that cost a hundred thousand dollars. The business world wouldn’t accept it. There’s a lot of them that that’ll map it for $5,000 when you buy it, but it’s only 50% effective. And you must realize that if you create something too expensive for the business market, if it has the wrong features, that doesn’t go anywhere. So as, as I develop products, um, I go, I matriculate the idea almost like, like, uh, uh, osmosis, a reverse osmosis filter, where you filter it.

Doug (18:38):
And as it moves through these three zones, it becomes an ecology of invention. So you might have to change your invention. If it’s too expensive, you might have to change your invention. If it is not patentable, right, or you might have to modify something because someone has prior art, you might have to take a left or right to get around it. And then a business, a modality. They might know what, what they want and where it has to go from a marketing perspective, but they can’t invent an idea. They can’t pack a patent attorney. Isn’t the inventor. And isn’t the business person. And the inventor, sadly in, in many cases, uh, becomes more erudite and feels above the patent process and the business have, we’re just going to invent well, you know, that’s the wrong thing. You could do it in a, in a, in a, in an environment where, where you’re just inventing and having fun. But if you want to help humanity, you want to bring something where people can afford it and use it. The ecology of invention must be well understood and matriculated through those three categories. That’s something I’ve developed and it works great rich three categories again, or that world of patents, the world of invention and the world of business.

Rich (20:00):
Right. And I picture them in that, that ecology drawing, like with the N that’s in a circle where you basically have all three of them with arrows in between. Yeah. It’s like one big cycle that, that, um, each feeds the other.

Doug (20:16):
Yeah. That’s like on our website, uh, patent design, we have that as an area for people to look at and learn. It’s a, it’s an incredibly important aspect. And, uh, uh, it’s important. Even if you’re someone that’s doing, you know, a big company, that’s doing 1200 patents a year, that’s a different modality. They’re just trying to get as many patents as possible and see if they want to use them. But the problem is, is as you know, most patents never feed the money that people have even put into it. Correct. And, and, uh, that’s where, uh, uh, it’s not the patent attorneys issue. It’s the invention and the business people who haven’t understood their relationship to the patent process

Rich (21:07):
A hundred percent, you know, that, that’s why I’m passionate about educating entrepreneurs about this educating inventors, about how patents work so that they know what they headed for. Um, and they don’t, you know, invest too much into patenting when it’s not the right thing for them in their venture. Yeah. That’s why I wrote the book.

Doug (21:30):
Yeah. Even when people are coming up with ideas, I always say, uh, um, what, what is your market cap for your idea? You know, what is the, you know, we’re, we’re, you know, what, how big is the market? Cause a lot of people will think of an idea, which is, you know, creative creativity is a wonderful thing to do. Invention is a wonderful thing to do. If your job is not to make money and you just want to invent something and have fun with it. Great. That’s a great, uh, internal process. But if you really want to make money, you have to, when you’re inventing from the business side, you have to say, Oh, well, what is the market cap for? This is, if I get 2% of a billion dollar market, it’s going to be a lot easier to make. Uh, let’s say, uh, financial success, as opposed to, let’s say, if you have some new way to turn a bottle cap in know maybe your instance, a very small market, and it’s not worth your life, which I’ve seen a lot of people do where they have. They’re so passionate about an idea that they, um, don’t realize the reality of the business world. Yep,

Rich (22:44):
Absolutely. You know, something I’ve been talking about recently. I think the flip side of that, it’s, it’s not even the passion about the idea. It’s the belief that this is their one and only idea. It’s like, um, it’s like, they’re passionate about it because they think this is it. This is my baby. And if something happens to this baby, I won’t get another one. And so it’s like that belief that, that, that, that this scarcity of ideas is what has them put so much attention and energy into any one particular idea?

Doug (23:19):
Yeah. Well, the, that’s why I talk about, uh, this, uh, this process of, of creativity, um, uh, in my book where you can generate hundreds of ideas and, uh, and, and, and pick through them, it’s the process of generating as many ideas as you can and call it, calling them down to something that is, is the right point. So getting to visionary leader, you need a guiding light. Okay. It’s not just the, you have to have the belief, uh, to weather, the storm of, of the status quo. The status quo will always rebuke innovation. It’s, uh, it’s a, it’s just a natural law of, of, of, of the world of business. And you have to be stalwart and very strong to want to weather that storm, to break the status quo and bring your idea forward. And, uh, if you’re it, believe me, I’ve created many, many companies.

Doug (24:21):
It takes tremendous dedication and years of work. So you have to make sure it’s worthy of your, uh, of your life force of your energy to do. And it’s, it’s never just one idea that is, is really, you’ve lost your, your, your process. You’re you have to understand, is this a real problem? Is this an unmet need? And my guiding light is I don’t do things where I’m trying to make, uh, like a Tesla engine or battery lasts an extra hour. Everything I do is based upon helping humanity. Those are the products I develop, and that is my guiding light. How am I going to help humanity? How am I going to make people better? And is this actually going to be worth my while? And that’s my guiding light, that’s my personal one. Everyone has to have their own.

Rich (25:14):
Got it. So you’re, mission-driven in that respect. Yeah. Awesome. Um, yeah, let’s talk about the book. Tell him, you know, tell me about the book. So the book is conquering, the chaos conquering the chaos of creativity, and it was just released in January. Uh, so, so tell me a bit about it.

Doug (25:32):
Well, uh, uh, to me, people always ask me rich, you know what? You’ve done, hundreds of products, what is, what is your favorite one? Which one stands out. And I say, there’s not, it’s not one product. It’s the process I’ve developed of invention and creativity to me over the four decades of innovation. That’s what has been important. So over that time, I would always write down in my lab books, which I kept, uh, you know, I’d probably have like 60, 70 of them. Oh, here’s a way to solve this problem. Here’s something that I did psychologically to, uh, help me think faster. Here is a process that I, uh, I think could work. And I’ve learned on this project. And about 10 years ago, I started to say, well, you know what? I think I want to write a book. I want to put this together to bring this to people, to maybe help them, uh, with, uh, uh, creative problem solving.

Doug (26:33):
So after, uh, over the last four years, I’d been working diligently and it really has turned into my life’s work where I’ve, I’ve created. Uh, we talked about the ecology of, of, uh, of business patents and, and, uh, uh, invention. This is the ecology of your mind, body and spirit, uh, and how invention takes every part of you. It takes your psychology, your spirit, your philosophy, your analytical process, your passion, and for anyone who has invented, it is not just a, uh, how do I say it? A, a very analytical, not emotional process. It involves every part of you. And so I have created a book that has these, uh, what I call it, the totality of creativity, where you learn how to use the psychology of your mind to think quicker, uh, how you engage your passion in a way that overcome roadblocks, how, when you failed and failed, uh, so many times you can be regenerated and move forward.

Doug (27:51):
And then also how you scientifically can take the most complex problem possible, break it down and solve it. And, uh, that is this book. And it’s, uh, it’s, uh, right now at a point where I’m meeting many people like yourself and we’re talking about it. We, I do not think that in our society, we, we teach creativity and imagination. I think it’s just the reverse and our schools. You’re taught to learn something and spit it out. You fit into boxes and more boxes and more boxes. I think teaching imagination and creativity as a main course, uh, from when you’re a kid to an adult is really our greatest potential. Our greatest gift. If, if I can say that, and it is my passion, as you can see, to inspire everybody and through the book, I’m having conversations about people that, uh, you know, some people are stuck on, on, you know, I say, I just not feeling imaginative and that tears my heart out, because it, we are naturally creative. We are natural, naturally imaginative. It is innate in us all. Yeah,

Rich (29:12):
Absolutely. And I, I, I love the idea of, of teaching creativity as a subject and that being a foundation, you, you know what I think the most valuable course I took in, um, in my, in grade school was

Rich (29:28):
Typing in the sixth grade. This is in 1980. So before computers were really big, although I already had a radio shack, TRS 80 model one, I really, I did. Yeah. 1979. I, uh, I, uh, I purchased that, but the point is like, no one really saw what was coming, but that one course just learning how to touch, type, how to put both hands on the keyboard and, and, and, and type in the right way was probably the most valuable course I learned that I had in grade school. And I could imagine though, the creativity course, having that type of, kind of unexpected effect of like, just something that’s foundational, that ends up being the most useful thing that you use in life. And so I imagine your book is a similar thing, is like, it could be the, um, it could provide a framework and a structure for impacting whatever someone is up to in their life.

Doug (30:31):
Yeah. I’m hoping that it has a lot of avenues. One of the, uh, things there’s many, uh, uh, um, educators who have talked about maybe making it a course. And I am very excited now to talk to anyone that wants to listen about creativity and, and, uh, ability to, uh, unlock your imagination. And it’s not just that, but it’s waking yourself up. I found that a lot of people are kind of in this status of where they, um, uh, they’re just, they’re, they’re, they’re not excited. They’re, they’re not, uh, uh, uh, using full potential and, and waking up, but it’s kind of like, uh, one of the chapters, the book I call, uh, creativity, caffeine, you know, waking up as like an alarm clock that sounding, do you wanna, like in matrix, want to take the red pill or the blue pill? What do you want to do? And I’m hoping people will take the red pill and get out of the, you know, of the box that they’re put in and expand their imagination, because you can imagine anything, anything is possible. And if people just start thinking that way, imagine the solutions, uh, that we can generate it. It could be unbelievable.

Rich (31:53):
Yep. Well, we should all take the red pill and see just how far the rabbit hole goes. And, um, uh, this has been fascinating. And, uh, so, so Doug, if people want to learn more about you or get in touch with you, how do they go about doing so well?

Doug (32:08):
Uh, you can go to the patent design website, patent design.com, P a T T O N, the word design.com. And you can, uh, connect with me through there. And then also our book, uh, is, uh, uh, has a website, uh, which is conquering the chaos of creativity.com. And you’ll see a lot of ideas, but then you can just go to Amazon and type in my name at under books. And you’ll, you’ll see the book and you’ll be able to read a few of the chapters right there under the, uh, the read more categories. So those are, those are some ways. And then I’m also on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. So all that is, is also available. And now on clubhouse to clubhouse, uh, that you’ve just introduced me to as an incredibly exciting, uh, chat forum that I can’t wait to jump into. Thank you, rich, my pleasure. And again, thanks so much for being here. Thank you, rich. And I hope everyone that is listening is inspired to

Outro (33:16):
Thanks for listening to innovations and breakthroughs with your host, rich Goldstein. Be sure to click, subscribe, check us out on the web at innovations and breakthroughs that com and we’ll see you next time.