A powerful innovation technique is "humanization": benchmarking your product against the ideal human experience, not a competitor's feature set. This raises the bar for excellence and surfaces opportunities for deep delight, like Google Meet's hand-raise feature mimicking in-person meetings.

Startups often fail by making a slightly better version of an incumbent's product. This is a losing strategy because the incumbent can easily adapt. The key is to build something so fundamentally different in structure that competitors have a very hard time copying it, ensuring a durable advantage.

To work more efficiently, Anastasia Soare invented the first dual-ended brow brush with a spoolie but didn't know it was patentable. Now a market standard copied by countless brands, this missed opportunity serves as a key lesson for founders: hire a smart lawyer early to protect all product innovations.

When Spinbrush's first units proved defective (with 400,000 in the warehouse), John Osher scrapped the entire inventory. He knew that for a consumable product, a bad first experience would be fatal, choosing long-term brand integrity over short-term financial recovery.

John Osher produced a $5 electric toothbrush because his previous venture, spinning lollipops, made him a massive buyer of small motors and batteries. This scale allowed him to pay pennies on the dollar for components, a supply chain advantage competitors couldn't replicate.

To overcome skepticism about a $5 electric toothbrush, John Osher borrowed the "Try Me" button concept from the toy industry. This allowed customers to feel the motor's power in-store, instantly building credibility and driving sales in a category unfamiliar with interactive packaging.

John Osher didn't try to make a cheaper version of the $80 electric toothbrush. Instead, he positioned the $5 Spinbrush as a superior alternative to the $3 manual toothbrush. This re-framing of the competitive landscape created an entirely new market category.

The choice between a patent and a trade secret is a strategic decision based on vulnerability. If a product can be purchased and deconstructed to reveal its innovation, a patent is the necessary path. Trade secrets are only viable for innovations that are impossible to discover through reverse engineering.

Early-stage MedTech founders should deeply study existing patents in their field. This research goes beyond ensuring freedom to operate; it provides a strategic map of the competitive landscape, revealing opportunities for iteration, new combinations, and a stronger foundation for future filings.