I wrote previously about Innovation following Infrastructure and this is basically the other side of that coin. I recently was introduced to the pedal-a-watt device its a device that turns your bike into a stationary bike with resistance provided by a generator that actually puts power into your home electric lines, offsetting some of what you use. Its a neat little thing and as someone that uses a stationary bike with a very noisy fan, I was excited to get one. I had my credit card out to pay the $45 until I realized that $45 is just the shipping and the device is $399! More than my old stationary bike. I put away my credit card and moved on.

Is $399 worth it or not? Like most consumers, I'm not rational about what I'll pay, I anchor on other goods, in this case my old stationary bike. The problem the pedal-a-watt has is two fold. 1) they are not leveraging the economies of scale of Asian manufacturing and 2) the device I anchored against is. If I have learned one thing about innovating consumer products in my career, its that you can't go against the flow of an established supply chain, or, like the pedal-a-watt, your innovations are just swimming up stream. The good news for any innovator is that there is a ready and willing supply chain that's available to your idea, you just have to seek it out. So many Asian manufacturers are eager for new ideas, particularly those that come with technical expertise, that there's no reason to suffer through a situation like the above. Innovators need to start seeing Chinese manufacturing entrepreneurs as the potential partners that they are, and they will see that this is a golden age for people with inventions.