Invention Of Paper Money

How to Speed Up Your Prototyping Process

One of the most famous stories of prototyping done quickly, cheaply and spot-on came from the inventor of the cyclone vacuum. In 1978, James Dyson ripped apart a conventional vacuum and attached his own cyclonic filter using cardboard and duct tape. The crude model was a far cry from today's Dyson robotic cleaning machines that appear to be straight out of Michael Bay 's effects department, but his experiment worked: Dyson proved the cyclone technology would function on a small-scale household product, and the first-ever bagless vacuum was born.

What Dyson didn't do was spend a long time making his prototype look pretty or incorporating all the functions he wanted in the final product. His quick, resourceful prototype let him zero in on his main feature and improve the design from there.

Engineers who get too hung up on perfecting a prototype often lose sight of the bigger picture and waste precious development time. Here are a few ways you can speed up your prototyping process to get your invention or product to market faster.

Speed Up Your Prototyping: Be Resourceful

The Dyson example illustrates the first key lesson of prototyping: Even if you're trying to engineer the most complex, mass-produced machine, that doesn't mean you have to start with a fully functioning materials lab.

Many designers mock up a website or new app on paper before they even put any functionality to it, says Alan Nguyen , an entrepreneur, former CEO of the Yan Group, a Web-mobile-TV music channel platform.

"Just start building it," he says. "You can start with paper cutout."

With the prototype, you're usually just trying to show off one element of the product, whether it's the design or a specific function, so there's no need to fret about constructing every part of it out of consumer-grade material or technology.

"You need someone to learn how to Photoshop basically," Nguyen says. "You don't need Flash or to actually code interactions."

Many successful entrepreneurs decide to do this kind of in-house mock-up to save money and time instead of hiring an outside firm, he says.

Bill Lucas , director of curriculum at the Luma Institute , which is based in Pittsburgh and focuses on educating innovators on human-centered design, says he encourages entrepreneurs to rifle through the junk drawer to find materials to round out a prototype. One group working on a project cut Tylenol tabs in half to represent buttons; another working in a conference room turned coffee cups upside down and used them as knobs.

The Usury Accusation

, Has an excellent chapter about the difficulties of the Church during the “calamitous” Middle Ages. In short, the core problem was that the Church set up ideals that had no relationship with reality.

For example, the Church said celibacy was an ideal. The higher person needs no sexual life whatsoever, it claimed. It was very hard to sell that, especially to the medieval world, which was much more filled with licentiousness than many people realize.

The Church was always on the side of peace. The ideal is to “turn the other cheek” and “the meek shall inherit the face of the Earth.” Yet, the Pope had the largest standing army in Europe. The Church rarely, if ever, turned the other cheek. (It was your cheek that had to turn, not theirs.)

This disparity between the ideal and the real was not lost upon the populace. In it lay the seeds of the eventual destruction of the Church.

One of the unrealistic ideals had a direct impact upon the Jews: a strict ban against taking interest. In a purely agrarian economic system it is conceivable to exist without charging interest. However, once Europe discovered that money could be printed it changed the economy of Europe forever, and it was no longer possible to run a sophisticated commercial system without interest.

It was Marco Polo who brought the idea of paper money back from the Far East to Europe. Indeed, paper money is one of the greatest discoveries in the history of civilization. Until then, one had to carry his money around with him — and there was a limit how much one could carry. There were only so many cows and sheep, gold and silver, one could bring with him to the market. However, when paper was used to represent wealth it was literally a life-changing invention. It was nothing less than the turning point of the economic system of the Western world.

A businessman once described economics as follows: There is one box that gets shipped around the world, one person selling it and another buying it. Then the buyer ships it to the next location and becomes a seller, making a profit. If anyone stops the box and opens it the business is finished. You have to keep it moving.

To a certain extent that describes modern economics. The perception of value is every bit as important – even more important – than the actuality. It is what keeps the box moving.

Moving the box creates buyers and sellers — and buyers rely on borrowing money. In a system that forbids lending on interest the box does not move.

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