“Research is to see what everybody else has seen,  and to think what nobody else has thought.”   Albert Szent-Gyorgyi  I’m certain many of our listeners have had ideas for products of their own.    Trade practitioners are clever and innovative on the job and so, able to see new ways to “connect the dots” and solve a problem.   How do you go from idea to successful product on the market?   How long does it take to develop award winning products? Today we are joined by Bob Belvick, Product Manager for the HVACR Service Tools division of Inficon, a publicly traded, diversified industrial giant with HQ in Switzerland.   Bob shares his background story and talks about INFICON's other industries and what makes them different from competitors.     Bob focuses in on refrigerant leak detectors, one of the specialties of Inficon dating back to the 1969 founding of the company by scientists and engineers from GE and Syracuse University.   He takes us on a walkthrough of the product development process: eg. capturing customer needs, integrating technologies, analyzing the market, alpha and beta testing, working with his development team, to give us an overview of the complexities and time it takes to do it right – that is an Inficon characteristic!   Among many other tidbits, Bob also shares with us how they arrived at the name INFICON.   For more info on Inficon HVAC products go to: www.inficon.com/en/markets/air-conditioning   You’ll also find Inifcon HVAC products at www.TruTechtools.com/Inficon   This episode was recorded in July 2020.