If you have been following along, you have made a lot of progress on your idea.  If not do a quick catch up, you will learn a lot and we will be on the same page:

Concept Research

Market Research

This is where we often get clients so for some self promotion a list of our product development services and information on how we can help you.  Okay now that we are done with that, I will continue as if I am running the show as an inventor / entrepreneur.

Product Engineering Spec (preliminary)- You have started to define the product as the customer sees it, but now you have to go through and find the engineering requirements for the product.  If you have some electronics functions, you need an E.E. and so forth, Start a document outlining these areas and what expertise they might require.

Preliminary Feasibility- Find people to ask about your technical requirements.  Find friends of friends and ask them general questions about the engineering requirements (social networking can help here).  Is it a big deal, or easy?  Has anyone done something like this in the past?  You don’t have to divulge your idea to get some good feedback.

Make a “Ducktape Prototype”- Make something that illustrates the form or function.  It doesn’t have to be pretty, just has to do something.  Don’t go overboard on this, (I once spent a lot of money tweaking and building more of my ducktape prototype and honestly it was a waste of time & money).  It will probably not qualify as a reduction to practice (utility patent requirement), but it will help rally your team (we’ll get to that).

Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, are you an E.E.?  If you know a little about board design / prototyping perhaps you can get away with doing the first prototype, but it may take hours away from what you are good at like market research.  If you know nothing about circuit board design you have two options, pay someone or get an E.E. on your team.  Getting good team members is a large topic and will probably be another separate blog post.

Examine requirements-  I have been talking about circuit boards,  and E.E.s but there are often many different areas of expertise that are required to design, develop and launch a product.  Areas include: industrial design, mechanical engineering / CAD, material science / manufacturing and so on based on the area of your invention.   Do some preliminary research and put it in your product specifications document.

These steps are quick to write about, but often take a long time to execute.  Some of these topics / subtopics will be expanded on in future blog posts, but you should have an idea of what to do now.  And if you get stuck, we can help you develop your product.

Good job!  You have read the NPD Planning Post and realize that to complete a prototype you may need outside expertise and the sooner you line it up the better.  This post will give a quick run through of a assembling those experts.  We use several different sites, depending on the type of expertise we need but this morning I used www.guru.com so I will focus on that today.  Registering for Guru as an employer grants you access to search for freelancers depending on their area of expertise.  Although this method may provide some results eventually, posting the project for freelancers to peruse delivers results quickly.  Once a project is posted, you can invite specific freelancers to bid.  The posting process begins with selecting the area of expertise required to complete the section of the project.  Then you get to the project description.  Here are some tips for the project description.

• Catchy title describing skills and project
• Quick description of who you are and what you are doing
• Don’t give direct contact information
• Describe type of work and what other aspects of the project need to be integrated
• Don’t go into detail about what the project entails, that comes later
• Ask questions like hourly rate, fixed bid projects, examples of similar projects etc.

The desired response from the project description is an available consultant in the necessary field that works with your pricing structure and has some experience with a similar project.  Quotes from this stage are useless because you haven’t provided enough information for the consultant to accurately quote the project.  Send the top tier of responders an NDA.  If they don’t want to sign it and you care about that (we do) then don’t work with them.

After you have recieved the NDA, send out the Spec Doc (See Spec Doc and T5+2 Post).  The spec doc will be questioned and you must work through those issues.  This is not an opportunity to shy away from the potential issues with your product.  Some consultants may want money upfront to look through and critique the spec doc, we don’t participate in this type of arrangement.  Hopefully now you have shrunk the list of consultants to a few good candidates.  Some projects this is like 50 responders, 10 top tier, 6 NDAs, 3 Final candidates.  Now you must evaluate the options based on price, lead time, location and  any other variables that are necessary for this project.  Make your pick and work with it.  It is also important to let the other candidates know that you have chosen someone else and provide a quick reason why.  Now you have an expert and are on your way!