Managing Partner Tucker Marion will be presenting his new research on start-up innovation outsourcing at the Research and Development Management Conference in Manchester, England between June 30 and July 2.  For more information on the conference please visit: http://www.rndmanagement.info/. The research paper, “Outsourcing Innovation: A Guide for Start-ups”, focuses on lessons and best practices for maximizing the effectiveness of using outside resources to bring your product to market.

The research abstract is below

This paper explores the beneficial impact of outsourcing on new venture innovation development efficiency and effectiveness.  The relationship of outside firms on innovation commercialization is highlighted, with an additional focus on the enabling role service providers such as rapid prototype fabricators and quick-turn manufacturers perform.  We synthesize our research into five distinct lessons, which form a guide for new ventures in selecting and implementing these external resources.  The first lesson is optimizing your firm to allow easy integration of outside resources.  In our study, the most successful firms leveraged a network of outside providers by keeping internal head-count low, and migrating to a software-like agile development processes.  The second lesson is strategically selecting partners that provide more strategic long-term assistance as opposed to only discrete development resources.  These firms help connect channel partners, customers, and new investors.  The third lesson is managing the innovation process through agile milestones, not onerous procedures.  Maintaining a balance between flexibility and discipline is a pathway to success for the new venture.  Next, the ability of the firm to quickly and inexpensively source and have solutions fabricated for internal and external customer testing is essential to an efficient process.   These fast solutions place concepts quickly in the hands of the development team and potential customers – speeding the process to market through rapid vetting of successive iterations.  Finally, the use of quick-turn manufacturers and assemblers can also help the new firm gather important sales data without having to invest large amounts of capital on costly inventory – helping the new venture preserve precious financial capital while capturing data needed for full commercialization.  These guiding lessons not only contribute to applied management knowledge, but outline phenomenon that require further detailed empirical investigation in the space of new venture innovation development.

For additional information on how Flashpoint Development can be your outside innovation experts please contact: info@flashpointdevelopment.com

Logos can make your brand stand out, but how do they get that way? How do inventpreneurs go from ideas, descriptions and emotions to a final product? The featured  development of our logo will show you.

The process theory revolves around iterative designs based on refinement and feedback.  The process begins with a description of the company / product.  The description should include high level functional and emotional statements for example: quality, organized, bringing elements together, which developed into two concepts: “center of the team” and “flow chart process”.  For our case, we had our designer read through the existing website and create a first round of designs (left).

We selected our two favorite of the group and encouraged our designer to experiment with colors.  We liked logos 4 and 6, but we were looking for some additional work on the logo to expand on the flow chart concept of number 4 and the center of the team concepts in number 6.

We ended up choosing the blue and green flow chart concept and we really liked it.  We brought it out into the marketplace and solicited feedback.  The feedback that we got was positive, but

we wanted to experiment with adding a little pop to

the logo.  The next round contained a lot of pop both with the logo, text and orientation.  We liked integrating a circle into the middle of the logo to get back to the center of the team concept.

Of course you knew what we ended up with at the very begining of the post, but I hope that this example of both the logo creation process and the development process as a whole has helped.

Post your Logo Story!

We as product developers spend a lot of time communicating. We evaluate and give comments on design, engineering, packaging and so much more. Spending the time drawing arrows and typing up comments can add up quickly. With this new tool, that time compresses to very little.

Jing is a screencast tool. While screen casts have been around for several years, none have them worked consistently and easily. Jing does! Check out the sample below.

Contact Us to learn more about how these tools can help get your product to market

A large part of duck tape prototyping is doing it for cheap. This could mean $20, $200 or even more… but it is still a lot cheaper than a professional prototype. The cost of duck tape prototypes is mostly materials. There is no expensive CAD, engineering or design to be done, only fabrication time. The hidden cost of duck tape prototypes is the time, but since most inventors do this stage in their basement or workshop time isn’t a wallet type expense.

You can save time by doing your homework on materials, supplies and parts that you expect to need. Most can probably be found walking around the box stores in your area, but you could save some money and some alteration time by finding the materials online. Beware however to check the specifications / drawings of these parts to make sure they are what you think they are, and not just a pretty picture.

The major difference between duck tape prototyping and all other types of fabrication is the variety of materials you will use. You can use wood, plastic, metal and everything in between.

Also beware that you will probably use more materials than you expect. You will make mistakes on your early prototypes, having a few extra materials will help avoid wasting more time by going back to the store or waiting for shipping. Having extras will come in handy, but always save your receipts and return unused materials, that money can come in handy later in the development process.

For those who have had meetings with me over the past week or so, I am sorry I was sick. Not anything serious, but even a cold can have bad affects on a product development project. I’ll share a few tricks that kept me going and have put me in a great position to catch up easily without skipping a beat.

When I was sick, seeing the long list of e-mails in the morning pertaining to projects seemed like an insurmountable task. My immediate replies where not as clear as general and when the communication starts to break down, projects break down. So I used the classic writing task of drafting, going through all of my replies and then revisiting adding information being more willing to over inform than usual.

My calendar which is usually very fluid to accommodate quick client calls quickly became filled with reminders to do follow-ups. I used Google Calendar that even sent me a text message to my phone which will helped me stay on top. Besides using the calendar tools I also relied on my notebook like a crutch to reflect on phone calls.Usually these items stay in my notebook and in the front of my brain, but when my memory got foggy I used tools to help.

No matter how hard I tried, my productivity was seriously depleted. At one point I thought I would just work through it, but I ended up probably extending my sickness for a few days. Once I accepted that my productivity was down, i started really building relatively long to do lists. Sure I didn’t like that items were piling up, but that meant nothing was falling through the cracks.

You might be asking: What makes product development so different than other occupations when you are sick? The answer is that there are a lot of different things going on with different consultants on different projects. So even if you are taking more of a hobby approach to your invention, you don’t want to let anything important to be confused, lost or forgotten. I hope these tips help.

What has helped you?