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April—June 2009
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Children often have traditions and a set of unwritten rules all their own. “Calling it” for example is almost universally accepted as law among children, granting certain rights of control to the kid who “called it”, whatever “it” is. Likewise, “no take-backs”, establishes and clarifies ownership; once an item is given, it cannot fairly be demanded back. Another tradition of children is the concept of the “redo”. The “redo” allows a second chance when an error or blunder has been made that is so grievous that not correcting it has the potential to ruin the fun of whatever game, contest, or type of play that is being engaged in.
Within the realm of product development, prototypes can the thought of as pre-emptive “re-dos”. They help to identify problems early, so those problems can be corrected with minimal cost. Prototypes help product developers to avoid huge mistakes, and to identify opportunities for advantages that their products otherwise might be lacking. In other words, prototypes are a critical element to making product development successful.
Efficient product development, either at the corporate level or the inventor level, usually involves prototyping early, and prototyping often. Prototypes don’t have to be expensive, they just have to be educational. Some of the most valuable prototypes I’ve seen cost less than a cup of coffee, and were made with a few nuts and bolts and some office supplies. These prototypes were valuable because they either proved or disproved a working theory in the first few hours of a project. In both cases, they saved valuable time, and moved the project forward.
If developed and utilized the right way, prototypes reduce risk by avoiding unnecessary expenditures of money and effort. A $500 proof of concept prototype can save tens of thousands of dollars worth of development time by focusing effort on the most promising concepts. On the other end of the spectrum, a $10,000 functional replica of a production product can prevent hundreds of thousands of dollars being wasted on the wrong tooling, wrong marketing strategy, or wrong product launch.
The bottom line for product developers is that prototypes are an efficient way to prevent long term expenses. Prototypes are practice runs, allowing developers to get everything just right prior to moving up an order of magnitude in investment. They really are like re-dos, except they occur prior to product launch. I, for one, would much rather find (and correct) problems with prototypes than with manufactured products.
Noah McNeely, Vice President of Design, Slingshot Product Development Group
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