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“I’m looking for the grandmother in Tignish who’s got a great idea who I can make wealthy,” Hall said. “Islanders are ingenious, I know this. So Islanders that have a great idea and have never thought of what else they could do with it should come.”

On Saturday, March 28 from 8 a.m. to noon at Credit Union place, people can learn how to market their ideas.

“We’re going to take them through a translation session – we’re going to teach them how to take their idea and turn it into a business opportunity that major companies can understand,” Hall said. “Second thing, we’re going to do a valuation on it. We’re going to take their idea we’re going to run it through a business simulation forecast – the same tool used by Nestlé’s, Proctor and Gamble, Kraft Foods, major corporations. We’re going to give them a sales forecast that tells them how much they’ll sell and what the fair market price is to sell this to a small or a large company.”

The third aspect of the plan will be to give people access to companies. “In the U.S.A. we have something that is called the Manufacturing Extension Partnership,” Hall said. “The Manufacturing Extension Partnership has 1,600 people across the U.S. Those 1,600 will help make connections between your idea and a company. My goal is to turn Prince Edward Island into Innovation Island, so you can live in paradise and have your business anywhere in the world.” On April 20 the workshop “goes live’ on the website planeteureka.com. This plan has been in the works for two years because innovation in the United States has hit a low. Hall said the U.S. is desperate to get innovation going again and has approached a lot of different experts on how to achieve this.

“I said the problem you’ve got is translation and valuation,” Hall said. “We need to teach the entrepreneurs, the inventors how to speak this and that’s what we do. Secondly, nobody knows what it’s worth so we need a valuation system.” Hall said presently the closest competitor for this service would charge $100,000 to do one of these tests. “We have been able to get the price down to $2,500 but that’s to ACOA, and to the P.E.I. government, the cost to an Islander to do this is nothing this Saturday, if you come this Saturday.”