Today is 8th grade career day, and boy am I nervous.

 

Here are more of the questions for the day. Would you mind if I practiced my answers on you? 

 

A. What are the main responsibilities/duties of this job? “Make sh*t and sell it!” has been the mantra of my life since my early days in the leather business. Short, sweet, to the point. (Please pardon my French, but I do think that 4-letter words can add to the variety, the richness, and the impact of language when used with some moderation.) Today my job is more to: 

             i.  figure out what to make; 

            ii.   guide others in the making of things, and; 

            iii.  Go out and sell them. 

 

"Nothing happens until someone sells something."  (from IBM )

 

B. What skills or academic preparation do you need to perform this job successfully? As an inventor an intuitive understanding of the natural world is useful so as to not waste time fighting natural laws of gravity, magnetics, friction etc. Mine is a science background, and analytic thought, experimentation and the scientific method are very useful at times. We have evolved from inventing toys and games to developing technologies that have cross-platform (like that high falutin’ term, do ya?) applications. Which is to say, we develop technologies that can be used in many types of toys, games, novelties, etc. 

 

C. What subjects in school helps in performing your job? Learning to draw and depict mechanisms is very useful. I wish I were better at it. Industrial/product design was my route to becoming an inventor, and that variety of drawing, building and thinking skills have been a good background for invention of the sort of low tech product that we create. 

 

D. Is there one basic Rule-of-Thumb you use to ensure your success? Don’t EVER give up! Believe that what others may think impossible, may be possible and worth doing. 

 

E. Explain how you arrived at this job. Just lucky. I wanted to be an inventor, hadn’t yet finished my Industrial Design degree, wasn’t a very good industrial designer anyway, and couldn’t get a job anywhere until someone suggested I go to the toy designers, Marvin Glass and Associates. They hired me. 

 

F. How does your job or profession help individuals, society, or the community? Toys are the most important form of product because toys inspire the work we do as adults, and as adults we change the world.

 

G. What advice would you give someone coming into your field? Run, don’t walk away. Inventing and licensing is speculative and can be very frustrating. This is the last thing in the world most people would want to be doing, BUT, for a very select few, it is the only thing in the world they should be doing. 

 

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