Invention on demand

A Fab Four partnership brainstorms boisterously to spice up new but mundane products. A. Ze´ev Hed, Richard Pavelle, Sol Aisenberg, and George Freedman meet once a week to thrash out ideas for new products that are leading to many patents and hefty sales. They have to their names more than 300 products, 130 issued and pending patents, and more than 50 licensing arrangements for such gizmos as the 10 second hand dryer, a credit card-sized calculator, a microwave popcorn popper, and a more effective sunscreen. What these products lack in glamour they make up for in royalties from several hundred million dollars in sales of their products by companies like Raytheon, Canon, Casio, Lockheed, and General Electric. The quartet got the idea to join forces about 10 years ago while attending meetings at a now-defunct consultant networking group in Cambridge called Qube. Figuring that by joining forces, they could achieve greater success than any could alone, the four worked part-time for three years before devising a viable business model for a new company.