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
