166 InventRight Founder Stephen Key

Stephen Key is a lifelong entrepreneur whose made a career out of licensing his ideas for consumer products to influential companies. Today he uses his expertise to mentor and coach other creative people. He also writes extensively about entrepreneurship and the process of investing.   Stephen Key is an award-winning inventor, an intellectual property strategist, and a successful entrepreneur. The more than 20 products he has licensed over the past 35 years have sold in Walmart, 7-Eleven, and Disney stores and theme parks worldwide, as well as been endorsed by Michael Jordan, Alex Trebek, and Taylor Swift. In 2002, Key cofounded inventRight, an educational program that teaches people how to license their ideas. In addition to mentoring and speaking, his first book, One Simple Idea: Turn Your Dreams Into a Licensing Goldmine While Letting Others Do the Work, has been translated into five other languages. He writes a popular online weekly column for Inc. and is a long-standing contributor to Entrepreneur.