This week on the Creative Legends podcast our guest is Tom Pellereau, Inventor and BBC Apprentice Winner 2011. 

Tom discusses idea generation from an inventor’s perspective, his approach to problem-solving and talks us through the thinking behind some of his most successful. 

Tom’s creative approach centres keeping people at the core of the idea - but there is also a thread of fun running through most of his inventions. 

Here’s a summary of what Graham and Tom talk about:

• Tom delves into his bag of goodies in the studio and talks through what was behind the ideas for his products. These range from his first success, the curved nail file called StylFile through to the StylPro which cleans makeup brushes - selling millions!
• Graham and Tom also chat about the influence and role of Lord Sugar after Tom won the Apprentice in 2011 and how they integrated the ‘commercial’ with the ‘creative’ for a winning formula.
• As an engineer, Tom uses creativity in a more systematic way. His dream was to become an inventor from the age of 4.
• Tom is dyslexic and he believes this has helped him use creativity in a different way.
• Tom doesn’t position himself as being creative but as a problem solver; he looks for flaws in products and tries to fix them to improve the product.