About
MICHAEL G. COLBURN has spent more than 45 years founding and
running businesses based on creativity and design. He is most proud of
the fact that former key employees purchased and still run some of
these businesses or have founded their own. In 2005, he and his wife,
Mary Esther Treat, launched Ideas Well Done, a firm that focuses exclusively
on inventing new products and bringing them to the marketplace.
Since then, Michael has created over 25 inventions and has patents issued
in multiple countries.
Ideas Well Done was sold to longtime employee Steve Bogner in
2013 and is still thriving today.
Michael and Mary Esther live in Vermont and enjoy being close to
family, cross-country skiing in winter, and long-distance walking in
summer and spring.
Featured Work
Invent, Innovate & Prosper
You don’t need to be lucky, or a genius, to create a successful invention. You just need a clear process to spark ideas and bring them to market.
Michael Colburn is an inventor. He wasn’t always, but he made himself into one. He’s spent the last four decades building multi-million dollar businesses around his inventions, and in that time, he’s realized a powerful truth: Inventing is a skill anyone can master.
Michael’s success was not an accident. With every invention, he followed a clear process for finding an idea, researching, testing, and bringing it to market. Along the way, Michael studied history’s great creators and realized their processes were not very different from his. Artists, writers, inventors, entrepreneurs—they all follow a similar method for bringing ideas to life. We just so rarely get to see it.
Invent, Innovate, and Prosper is a practical handbook for inventing based on Michael’s decades of work as a successful inventor. He shares his step-by-step system for launching profitable inventions, along with the surprising real-life lessons that helped him thrive. You’ll learn how to:
• Adopt a detective’s mindset to find invention ideas in everyday life
• Research your idea’s viability and troubleshoot glitches
• Design, engineer, and build prototypes with minimal financial investment
• Prepare and test your products for the market
• Navigate logistics like funding, patents, contracts, and distribution
Michael also profiles some of the world’s most prolific inventors, from Alexander Graham Bell to Lori Greiner, and offers legal templates to get you started. Whether you’re already a maker or are just starting to brainstorm new products, you’ll discover how to turn the kernel of an idea into a lucrative invention.
