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CHIN |
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| Title |
Dual mode bicycle - The journey of an informal innovator |
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| Details |
Li Yan hails from Handan, in Heibei province, China. Since his childhood, he has loved inventing things. On one occasion he was angry at something and was holding onto the handle of a bike so hard that he ended up twisting it. This made him realise that power can be transmitted through the handle as well. He had often seen that much effort was required to push the pedal while carrying a heavy load or climbing up a slope. He wondered whether it would be possible to move the front handle in such a way that it generates extra power for the pedal. He realised that he needed a fulcrum on which a lever could be placed and transmission of power through the handle could be possible. After many trials, he finally succeeded in making a handle powered bicycle.
He had a few problems in the initial model for turning the bike while driving it. However, during the early part of his life he was a car mechanic and with his experience he designed a shaft that kept the handle steady while turning.
He had then realised that the handle sometimes moved too fast making it difficult to control. When he tried to reduce the mobility of the handle, it moved too slow to generate any power. After pondering for many days about this problem, one morning he woke up at 3 am and realised that he could use a brush to control the movement of the handle better.
He did not have sufficient savings to go through with his innovation all by himself. On occasions, he had to borrow money from friends. But there was no point in the development process where he doubted himself. He has also developed a tandem bicycle deploying the same handle principle.
Childhood
As a child Li was always on the lookout for making new things. At the age of 12, he made an apparatus to light a firework safely. He used a tungsten filament. The heat of the filament lighted the wick of the firework. He liked to experiment with circuits as a child. At the age of 10, he successfully made a doorbell after studying a circuit diagram in a book. He used a car horn in that setup. His mother was very supportive of his hobbies to make new inventions and he would come up with ideas for creating something new all the time.
Product development and marketing
He was not quite sure whether he should take his products to market. He felt he did not have the necessary finances for the initial investments and working capital. However, he has carried out market surveys and he found that many people are interested in his innovations. The positive feedback has encouraged him and now he wants to introduce the product into the market. However, he admits that though there are many provisions in the national policy to provide credit, it is still very difficult to access credit.
He believes that it would be better to find a manufacturer to whom he can license the product. He feels he also does not have enough drive left to become an entrepreneur at his age. However, he derives satisfaction in the fact that he has made a truly useful product.
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| Volume No. |
Honey Bee 23(4) & 24(1) 35, 2013 |
