The Association for Women with New Product Ideas and Inventions is founded by new product development specialist and personal coach, Cally Robson.

The community represents the growing numbers of women who are coming up with innovative products and services, and using the Web to develop and promote them.

The Association's website is the central hub of the community, run with the aim of providing practical support and guidance, networking, know-how and inspiration to women who are commercializing their innovative product and business ideas across the UK and beyond.

The Association's patron is award-winning inventor and entrepreneur, Deb Leary OBE, CEO of Forensic Pathways Ltd, listed as one of the UK's Top 100 female entrepreneurs.

Many others have inspired and contributed to the launch of this site. Read more about Contributors and Associates

But just who is Cally Robson, and why The Association of Women with New Product Ideas and Inventions?

As a corporate media executive turned part-time designer of her own innovative crockery system, and as a personal coach working closely with inventor-entrepreneurs since 2003, Cally knows just how challenging it is for ANY individual to take onboard the many aspects of turning a new product or business idea into a reality.

Women in particular often have to overcome far greater barriers in self-confidence, even when they are just as skilled and able as their male counterparts. And for many, tapping into new technologies and the Internet to help develop and market their ideas is especially daunting.

Against this back-drop, many of the traditional inventor clubs, established business networking meetings, and online groups are just not comfortable or focused enough places for women to seek help. Women tend to work in a far more cooperative way, and are often just as interested in developing themselves as well as their business ideas.

Now as a work-at-home mum in rural Oxfordshire, Cally also understands the added pressures for the increasing number of enterprising women who have to reconcile their creative drive with family commitments, tight budgets and distance from specialist support and resources that keep up with fast-changing times.

That's why, as someone who has worked with new media and the Internet since 1999, Cally has recognized that the timing is right to establish a central online community and resource specifically for women inventors and product entrepreneurs to access when and where it suits them. All backed up with the personal touch of an experienced guide, mentoring and coaching, and a Discussion Forum in which to post questions and share answers. Face-to-face networking and events are still key, but run with the particular needs of women developing innovative products and business ideas in mind.

Here is a bit more about Cally's background and how it has led to her founding the Association and setting up this website ...

• I was 9 years old when I made my first invention -- a model of a manual washing machine for camping trips. I can't draw, but I've always liked modelling.
• Technical subjects don't phase me - I did a soft science degree at university.
• In my first job out of college as a trainee Chartered Accountant, I got a good legal and financial grounding before moving on to more creative things. 
• I spent several wonderful years as a children's book editor developing illustrated home learning and information materials. I learned that a picture says a thousand words. And books only get published when they earn more than the cost of making them! As a science editor, I was always interested in making technical subjects entertaining and easy to understand.
• I did a journalistic turn in magazine and newspaper publishing. Part of an indulgent 7-year interlude working in Hong Kong, in which I also got to head up product development for Time Life Asia to distribute through its international direct selling teams.
• I decamped to Disney Consumer Products Asia, where I picked up a detailed knowledge of international licensing and product development. And insights into developing and managing Intellectual Property assets globally.
• I joined a Disney colleague to set up dotlove.com in the dotcom Nineties. We went from start-up to 20 staff, publishing a multilingual (English, Chinese and Japanese) information/community site on sex education. I learned much about the pain of continually moving to larger offices, setting up structures and systems, business plans, reporting to investors, meeting targets, recruiting new staff quick, and the hands-on building, marketing and management of a fast-growing website, and its technical back-end!
• Even before the dotcom bubble burst, I was on my way back home to a job in Senior Management in a London-based company developing an innovative TV-on-demand technology and service (the company was subsequently sold to Tiscali). We learned important lessons on how consumers use video. And how even a 600-employee start-up can come unstuck in a flourishing economy.
• Call it a life-stage thing, I took redundancy and jumped at the chance to train as a life coach with Results Coaching, an International Coach Federation-accredited coaching trainer. I discovered that to get what you want in life, you first have to DECIDE what you want. Got married, moved to the wonderful small town of Charlbury in the Cotswolds and became a mum all inside 2 years.
• I set about developing my concept for a modular crockery set. In the process, discovering all the pitfalls solo inventors and designers usually fall into. Before finding a patent application just lodged for my same idea. Sigh.
• Meanwhile, I built a successful part-time practice, ideas-into-action, specializing in coaching people to develop their new ideas. In 2006 I put together an introductory workshop for the prestigious Business & IP Centre at the British Library in London. It was based around the different mindsets creative-inventive people need to adopt in order to mastermind an idea and develop it for commercial success. The concept of Invention Intelligence was born - savvy thinking for inventive minds. I have been a key training delivery partner at the BIPC ever since and direct many clients to tap into its amazing free resources.
• Early in 2008 I set about transforming the concept of Invention Intelligence into a self-sustaining online community that could reach and help more people develop their innovative product and service ideas into successful businesses.
• In early 2009, with the help of many people I now know in field of innovation and entrepreneurship, I re-launched shesingenious.org on an online membership platform and focused it toward the needs of the rising number of innovative women starting up new business ideas and developing new products.  www.ShesIngenious.org was established as the home of The Association of Women with New Products and Inventions.