Crain’s Chicago Business: An Interview with Inventables’ Zach Kaplan
8/24/2010
Zach Kaplan, founder and CEO of Chicago-based Inventables, doesn’t look like an inventor. But don’t be fooled – he’s got a heck of a lot of inventions to his credit.
Inventables service links developers, suppliers
6/4/2010
With its latest development, Chicago-based Inventables LLC said it has created a neutral marketplace that will allow both developers and suppliers to bridge the product development stream.
Interactive Materials Marketplace
5/10/2010
Inventables describes itself as an online platform that helps material and technology vendors market their products to individuals and companies seeking sourcing.
Looking for the Next Post-It
3/16/2010
A Japanese company has come up with a sticky tape that contains no adhesive
Entrepreneurs share during tough times
3/15/2010
While most startups are struggling to find capital and customers right now, there is no shortage of established entrepreneurs looking to share their 2 cents (or even real money) with first-time business owners.
TEDx Windy City
2/10/2010
Zach Kaplan to speak at TEDx Windy City
Inventables Scores $2M from True Ventures
1/27/2010
Chicago-based Inventables has entered the scene and has an online marketplace for materials where vendors can advertise their products and engineers and designers can easily find these materials. And the site has just closed a $2 million funding round from True Ventures.
Inventables Number One Material for 2009
12/28/2009
16 Wild Materials You May Find in Future Products
1/29/2009
The Technology Hunters at Inventables, a Chicago-based firm, collect and sift through thousands of unique materials, products and gizmos every year. Then they pick the winners and drop details about the materials that have the right mixture of utility and uniqueness into an enormous electronic database, along with suggestions for how they could be incorporated into new products. Here are 16 of the best, brightest and quirkiest from Inventables.
Inventables featured on Prototype This! new show on Discovery Channel
11/2/2008
Inventables Innovation Center is being used on the Discovery Channel’s new show, Prototype This! Check out Dr. Mike North explain how he uses Inventables.
Growing demand has Titan hiring, expanding
8/29/2008
“Inventables is a company that helps consumer products companies innovate”
Creating the next hot gadget
9/11/2007
“Companies pay big bucks to develop new products and Inventables, LLC. helps those companies do just that.”
Custom Kicks
5/1/2007
Create profits through product innovation. “The concept ever walk into a party and see someone with the same shoes? Reclaim your unique style by pulling out your phone and beaming a new pattern to your feet….Although the sneaks are just a concept, the screen technology is real. Nike, are you listening?”
Just Add Inspiration
12/1/2006
Four times a year, Chicago-based Inventables sends A-list companies such as Boeing, Motorola and Nike a package of 20 gizmos with “unexpected properties.” Although some customers incorporate them as is into products, that’s not the point, says cofounder Zachary Kaplan, 27. The idea is to inspire innovative thinking by giving inventors unusual technologies and suggesting jump-off applications.
Innovate or Die
11/28/2006
“Some companies are essentially outsourcing some of their innovation. The article, “Just Add Inspiration,” explains how a small design company, Inventables, has lined up a number of big clients, including Motorola, Nike and Boeing. Four times a year, Inventables sends them materials and “gizmos” with some very cool — and often amazing — properties.”
Tool: Materials Are Hot
9/23/2006
“Inventables, a product innovation consultancy, sends out materials to a client list that includes Motorola, Samsung and General Motors. They contain the latest new materials, preselected and offered up as a springboard for “Eureka!” moments.”
Touchy-feely
6/12/2006
During a leisurely walk in 1948, noticing how cockle-burrs stuck to his clothing, Swiss engineer George de Mestral invented Velcro. These days, product development teams are expected to brainstorm at their desks. Enter Chicago-based Inventables.
Gadgets to Go
6/5/2006
“Griffin Technology of Nashville successfully found a new use for an Inventables item. Robert Donovan, vice president of design at Griffin, was intrigued last year when he received an Inventables box holding, among other things, a tape dispenser with a small adhesive base. He stuck the device, with its sticky microsuction material, to the side of his cubicle. The material is now a key part of Griffin’s popular iTrip, an FM radio transmitter that can be used with Apple’s iPod Nano.”
I see … I see … the future of toast
5/17/2006
Meanwhile, why can’t we buy any Transparent Toasters yet? “We don’t make products,” explains Inventables technology envisioner Osman Ozcanli. “We help design departments in corporations by educating them about new materials,” in this case, a transparent coating that conducts electricity.
Geniuses Show They Care at TED
2/28/2006
The TED conference has always been about bringing together ideas from various disciplines, and this year was no different … Inventables, a Chicago firm that scours the planet to find new materials for product designers, demonstrated Elastolite, a thin, flexible electroluminescent product from Oryon Technologies that has light-emitting phosphors connected to a small power pack.
ESPN
1/3/2006
ESPN asks visionaries Zach Kaplan and Keith Schacht to dream up how technology could change sports in the year 2015. (Check out ideas 6, 17, 19, 21, 22 and 30.) ESPN asks visionaries Zach Kaplan and Keith Schacht to dream up how technology could change sports in the year 2015. (Check out ideas 6, 17, 19, 21, 22 and 30.)
Business Week Online
12/28/2005
Business Week has named Keith Schacht one of the Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25.
Audience gifted, dowsed, delighted by Inventables
7/28/2005
Audience gifted, doused, delighted by Inventables — company finds offbeat inventions and puts them to use
Fortune
ID Magazine
6/1/2004
Thinking Outside the Box – Inventables packages materials and ideas and delivers them to your doorstep
Wilson Art
Design-Engine
9/13/2002
Bringing innovation and inspiring ideas to every designer and engineer
Core77
8/1/2002
…a physical and online library of interesting, unique, new and emerging technologies