By GREGORY ZELLER //
An inventive thinker with a long track record of commercial success and creative coaching is expanding his mind once again (and maybe yours).
Welcome to the National Inventor Club, new name – and coast-to-coast scope – of what was previously the Long Island Inventors and Entrepreneurs Club, and before that the separate inventors/entrepreneurs clubs of Nassau and Suffolk counties.
Founder and tireless tinkerer Brian Fried first launched the Suffolk County Inventors and Entrepreneurs Club in 2007 and followed it up with a Nassau County facsimile in 2012; the two clubs united in 2018 as the Long Island IEC, with the Farmingdale State College Small Business Development Center stepping in to provide early-stage commercialization resources and host monthly meetings.
The Farmingdale State SBDC is still involved regionally, according to Fried, who is directing the national expansion with the help of some impressive advisors, including William Salas of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent and Trademark Centers Resource Centers Program, Cornell University Department of Organizational Behavior PhD candidate Lillen Ellis and Terry Whipple, executive director of the Juneau County Economic Development Corp. in Wisconsin.
Each of these advisors brings a unique element to the mix. Salas has worked for more than five years at the Smithtown Library’s Patent & Trademark Resource Center and is an experienced e-filer with the USPTO; Ellis will manage a team of Cornell University students tasked with polling nationwide inventors about the assistance and resources they most need.
Whipple, meanwhile, may prove the vital cog: Not only is Wisconsin home to some 26 different economic-development agencies, according to Fried, but it was Whipple’s inventors-club model that the Long Island innovator – who’d already made a name as the creator of the Twist Ties-topping, chip clip-conquering Pull Ties fasteners – leveraged into the Suffolk County IEC 14 years ago.
Brian Fried: National treasures.
“I used his model when I first started the Suffolk and Nassau clubs,” Fried told Innovate LI. “He was kind of like a mentor to me when I started.”
The founder counts 12,000 members and visitors collaborating with the Long Island clubs since he flipped the Suffolk switch in 2007 – and those innovators have plenty of friends, according to Fried, who describes the national expansion as part organic growth, part pandemic pivot.
“All of the people I speak to on a daily basis talk to other inventors all over the country,” he noted. “When COVID hit and we were doing our meetings virtually, I was telling them to tell people to join [the online sessions], because they were available.
“So, if I’m going to step up and have great speakers and all kinds of great activities, why not just go national?” Fried added. “Everybody can be part of this inventor community, and be able to network and collaborate.”
The National Inventor Club held its first official meeting in January, and set a high bar for Fried’s “great speakers”: Patent-rich American engineer Martin Cooper, the wireless communications trailblazer credited as the “father of the mobile phone,” chatted up Fried and an online audience that actually extended beyond U.S. borders (Fried notes new members from England, the Philippines and even Uganda).
Both the inaugural meeting and the National Inventor Club’s second meeting, held earlier this month, are streaming in their entirety on the club website. The meetings, which also include product showcases and plenty of virtual networking, are open to both members and non-members for now, as is the club’s soon-to-be-exclusive, ever-evolving member directory, chock-full of commercialization expertise.
“After one or two more meetings, it will be members-only,” Fried noted. “It’s a membership-driven group, and people who are going to pay for it are going to be given all of the benefits.”
After the free trials, a comprehensive membership-fee structure kicks in – separate sign-ups for service providers (the “Alexander Graham Bell Package”) and inventors (who can choose the basic “Benjamin Franklin Package” or the premium “Thomas Edison Package”). Advertising opportunities, access to industry resources and other benefits vary.
When in-person gatherings resume, Fried imagines flesh-and-blood meetings will return to the Farmingdale State SBDC, with other regional meetings taking shape and most of the action shared virtually on the National Inventor Club website.
But for now, the mission is to build a strong following via the monthly online programming – to bolster both the fledgling national club and the many U.S. inventors left high and dry by the socioeconomic traumas of COVID-19.
“(The year) 2020 was a challenging year for inventors and entrepreneurs’ clubs nationally,” Fried said. “We had to change the way we came together to collaborate and network.
“This will be a great year ahead,” the innovator added. “I’m excited about taking my regional club to a national level … with great people to help and support the cause.”
