An Industry Veteran on How AI Is Changing Product Development

Artificial intelligence is changing the early stages of product development by speeding up sketching, drafting, and iteration, but it has not changed who is responsible for an invention or what a licensing partner will pay to see. That measured view comes from Trevor Lambert, who co-owns Enhance Innovations, an invention design and product development firm founded in 2010 in Champlin, Minnesota. We asked a sixteen-year industry veteran where the real change is, and where the hype outruns it.

Where the tools genuinely help

Q: What part of the work has AI actually changed?

A: “The front end. Concept exploration is faster. You can generate variations of a form, test ideas on screen, and throw out the weak directions before anyone commits real hours. For an inventor who used to wait days for a first sketch, that compression is real. It lowers the cost of being wrong early, which is exactly where you want to be wrong.”

He is specific about limits. “Faster sketches do not make a manufacturable product. The engineering still has to be right. Tolerances, materials, how the thing is actually made. AI helps you get to a question sooner. It does not answer the hard ones for you.”

What has not changed: who counts as the inventor

This is the point Lambert returns to most. “A tool does not invent. A person does. That is not my opinion, it is where the law is.” The United States Patent and Trademark Office issued guidance in 2024 stating that AI-assisted inventions are not categorically unpatentable, but a natural person must have made a significant contribution to the claimed invention for it to qualify, as set out in the office’s inventorship guidance. “You cannot list a model as the inventor. Use the tools, but understand a human still has to own the contribution.”

What licensing partners still want

Q: Has AI changed what companies expect in a pitch?

A: “Not really. They still want to understand the product fast and trust that it can be built. Renderings, a CAD model, a short animation, a clear sell sheet. Whether you used AI to get there does not change what lands on their desk. If anything, the easier these tools make it to produce slick images, the more a partner values materials that are accurate, not just pretty.”

That distinction shapes how the firm uses the technology. The Enhance model is virtual-first, built on renderings, CAD, and optional animation, and Lambert treats AI as a way to get to good options sooner, not as a substitute for engineering judgment. “The renderings still have to match a product that can actually be manufactured. A beautiful image of something nobody can build wastes everyone’s time.”

The risk he watches

Q: What is the downside for inventors?

A: “Believing the tool finished the work. I see people generate a nice picture and think they have a product. They have a picture. Between that image and a manufacturable, protectable invention is the part that still takes people who know what they are doing. The tools raise the floor on presentation. They do not close the gap to a real product.”

How to use AI sensibly

Lambert’s advice is unglamorous: use AI to explore concepts and reduce the cost of early iteration, then bring human engineering and design to bear before anything is presented or filed. Keep a clear record of the human contribution for inventorship purposes. And remember that the basics still decide outcomes. The U.S. Small Business Administration publishes resources for small-scale inventors and founders, and none of that fundamental guidance about protecting and presenting an idea has been rewritten by new software.

Keeping the disciplines together still matters, he argues. “When the same team handles the design, the engineering, and the pitch, AI is one more tool in a process that already knows what the end has to look like. On its own, in the wrong hands, it just produces faster versions of the same mistakes.”

“I cannot promise these tools will get anyone a deal,” Lambert says. “What I can say is that they help you fail cheaper and iterate faster at the start, and that the work that turns a concept into a real product has not gone anywhere.”

This article is educational and is not legal advice. Inventors should confirm current inventorship rules with the USPTO and consult qualified counsel.