There are many more ways to pay for product development than you may realize, including not paying for it at all. What is right for your situation will depend on your exact circumstances. You may wish to review the following before starting your next product development project. 1. Employees: Most of us are familiar with… Read More

Recently I had a client give me an idea for a new product he had been thinking of and then ask me for a Gantt Chart (Gantt Charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project) for the project.  I tried to explain that creating such a… Read More

Small companies in niche markets know they can design better products, but can they sell enough of their products to pay back their investment? When unit volumes are low, the cost of developing the product can sometimes exceed the manufacturing cost. Here are a few tips for reducing product development cost in a small company:… Read More

To outsource or not to outsource? It’s a question that arises again and again in small companies. Why? Because technology is evolving rapidly, and many small companies are struggling to fund the fixed cost of a full-time team with the necessary diversity of skills needed to stay competitive. For years, small companies have been developing… Read More

“If you do not know where you’re going, any direction will do” Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland We are often brought in to help with troubled product development projects that do not seem to be progressing as expected. You might expect that the reason for the lack of success would be poor technical skills in… Read More

We have a lot of interactions with CMs (Contract Manufacturers). These companies are amazing—they can do ten thousand things and not make a single mistake. Their business must work this way to stay competitive. Product development, on the other hand, is different. In product development, you are lucky if you do 10 things and get… Read More

If I had to pick the biggest mistake small companies make when it comes to product development, it would be that they make the mistake of treating product development as if it was just like any other business activity—sales, accounting, customer service, manufacturing, etc. Product development is a process of discovery, creativity and problem solving,… Read More

The prototype is all done and it seems to work well. Now, how do you get the prototype manufactured reliably and at a reasonable cost? If you’re like a lot of small companies, this is not something you do all the time. Finish Line has done more than one thousand projects for more than 300… Read More

Have you ever imagined what kind of product you would develop if money was no obstacle? Maybe that product is not as far out of reach as you might think. Sometimes when I ask our customers this question, the answer I hear is some kind of internet connect, color touch screen, portable wiz bang calculating… Read More

A long time ago, after a disappointing personal failure, someone told me: “Steve, there are no failures, there are only results. Sometimes you get what you want, and sometimes you get what you need—specifically, information about how to get what you want. Both results are helpful.” This changed my whole attitude on life. Instead of… Read More