Five Non-Negotiables When Vetting a New Product Development Partner
Bringing a new product to market always involves some degree of risk. For medical and industrial innovations or complex consumer products, the stakes are even higher. Although many factors determine a product’s market success, the right product development partner plays an essential and central role. For this reason, most companies conduct extensive due diligence in vetting and selecting a partner. Unfortunately, only later do some companies realize their partner was not an ideal choice. When this occurs, it’s generally due to not knowing how to identify the “non-negotiables.” Here are the top five you’ll need to look for and verify.
End-to-End Experience and Industry-Leading Expertise
Many companies assume that engaging a different partner for each product development phase (design, engineering, and manufacturing) is the most cost-effective approach. While this may seem to be the case, it poses unforeseen dangers that often come with an unexpected price tag. When the complete product development process isn’t approached holistically, any number of costly breakdowns can — and often do — occur. These include breakdowns in communication, coordination, innovation, quality control, and more.
On the other hand, a one-source partner ensures these breakdowns won’t occur because all aspects of product development are integrated under a single umbrella. This means you’ll be communicating with the same stakeholders from start to finish and ensures that all teams (internal and customer-facing) are on the same page. And because a one-source partner has complete visibility into its operations, it delivers exceptional degrees of oversight. At Pivot International, we are industry leaders with nearly fifty years of one-source product development expertise that spans fourteen industries throughout three continents.
Design for Manufacturing (DFM) to Drive Cost-Savings and Innovation
At Pivot, we like to say that DFM is one of the differences between a good one-source partner and a great one. DFM plays a crucial role in keeping your product development costs down by ensuring that your product is designed with manufacturing in mind. Without DFM, the result is often a product that looks and functions perfectly “on paper” but is too expensive to manufacture at scale. DFM considers everything from which raw materials are most compatible with various manufacturing methods and equipment parameters to whether the contours of a design pose production problems. DFM guards against sunk costs and “back-to-the-drawing-board” delays. It also fuels innovation by forcing designers to think outside the box. (When design options are narrowed by manufacturing limitations, designers are forced to innovate.)
The Ability to Rapidly Respond to Fluctuations in Market Demand
The fact that a product can be cost-effectively manufactured at scale does not necessarily mean that it can be scalably manufactured. For this, you’ll need to ensure your partner has the agility to rapidly ramp production up or dial it down in response to fluctuations in market demand. You’ll also need to determine if your partner allows you to flexibly shift production between large and small lot sizes. Last, be sure to check whether your partner has manufacturing locations close to your target market and whether you can “toggle” between these locations depending on your distribution needs. At Pivot, our investment in twinned mirror-mounted SMT lines and 320,000 square feet of manufacturing space across three continents delivers agile, flexible, and scalable manufacturing.
Technical Diversity for Customized Product Solutions
Technical diversity refers to the ability to deploy an extensive range of technologies and product solutions. Technical diversity is the opposite of hyper-specialization. (While specialization is good, hyper-specialization is not. To illustrate this point, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”) For companies seeking to develop low-complexity consumer products, a partner specializing in one or two ready-made solutions for one or two clear-cut problems can be a great fit. However, for medical, industrial, and complex consumer products, a partner that brings anything less than a well-stocked arsenal of technologies and product solutions is a clear liability. At Pivot, we bring the latest in wireless, cellular, optical, and other technologies to deliver customized product solutions to complex use case challenges.
Assistance With Regulatory Compliance
Federal efforts at geopolitical risk-mitigation strategies have resulted in many new trade policy and regulatory changes. For companies seeking to develop medical, industrial, or complex consumer products, these changes can be challenging to navigate. Selecting a partner like Pivot that can guide you through the regulatory process can significantly reduce the hassle and headache. Never work with a partner who lacks certifications that demonstrate compliance with regulatory statutes and adherence to strict quality control measures. At Pivot, our certifications include ISO 9001:2015, ISO 13485:2016, ISO 80079-34, and IEC 60601-1, and many more. Moreover, our facilities are FDA-registered.
Are you in the process of vetting a product development partner to help deliver a winning innovation to market? Pivot is the one-source solution you’ve been looking for! Contact us today for a no-cost consultation. We look forward to earning your business!
Four Risk-Reducing Strategies To Advance Your New Product Development
Is your company trying to determine if the time is right to move forward with your product development? If so, you’re not alone. Preparing to launch a project is challenging under the best of circumstances, and the events of 2020 continue to complicate matters. Dramatic economic and social changes have impacted supply chain security, technological trends, consumer behavior, and have resulted in significant market volatility. Company leaders now clearly understand two things. First, they are facing a new era of risk. Second, they are facing a new era of opportunity. Between the need to play it safe and act boldly, many leaders can feel deadlocked between these opposing positions.
At Pivot International, we believe that strategic risk reduction (“playing it safe”) and acting boldly are equally important. These positions aren’t opposing — they’re complimentary. Businesses really can “have it both ways,” and it’s our job to make this possible. For nearly fifty years, we’ve helped companies worldwide successfully navigate crisis, disruption, and market volatility while also driving growth. With innovation expertise that spans fourteen industries and 320,000 square feet of manufacturing space across three continents, we provide companies with the resources to move confidently forward with their product development.
The most successful risk reduction strategies serve to advance your product development by helping you play both good defense and good offense. Here are four that do both.
Alternative Sourcing Solutions
Companies continue to struggle with record-breaking supply chain disruptions and shortages. This means that one of the top risks that companies need to address is supply chain security. You know the saying: you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Unless you can cost-effectively procure the “eggs” (materials, parts, and components) for making your “omelet” (your new product), all bets are off. At Pivot, our highly diversified global supply chain network and alternative sourcing solutions help companies play offense by defying disruption.
2. Integrative Expertise
Product development undertaken in a piecemeal fashion is always risky. When product design, engineering, manufacturing, and distribution are farmed out to separate partners, the result is too often communication issues, oversights, missed opportunities, and costly breakdowns and delays. But by integrating design, engineering, manufacturing, and distribution under a single company umbrella, there’s virtually no risk of the “left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.” When you work with a one-source partner like Pivot, you can be assured of exceptional levels of coordination, collaboration, and a transparent approach that generates a decidedly offensive play: a smooth, seamless process, the creation of a superior product, and expedited time-to-market.
3. Design for Manufacture (DFM)
DFM might be one of the best-kept secrets regarding risk reduction strategies that also confer powerful offensive benefits. DFM, precisely as the name suggests, ensures that design is never undertaken separately from manufacturing considerations. This ensures your product design doesn’t turn out to be too costly to manufacture at scale. (As hard as it may be to believe, this happens more often than you’d think.) DFM goes beyond optimizing design for manufacture by driving innovation. At Pivot, we like to say that DFM exerts “downward adaptive pressures” that force designers to think outside the box. This leaves them no choice but to devise product solutions that are not only supply chain and manufacturing friendly but also innovative.
4. Scalable Manufacturing
Inventory shortages and inventory excesses represent two versions of the same costly problem. To safeguard against this risk while mounting a strong offense, companies need a partner with scalable manufacturing to help them rapidly respond to fluctuations in market demand. At Pivot, our company-owned manufacturing facilities let you flexibly choose between large and small lot sizes. Thanks to our investment in mirror-mounted twinned SMT, you can even “toggle” between locations to optimize your distribution costs.
Risk reduction strategies that double as effective offensive strategies for seizing market opportunities are a win-win way forward. These strategies can end the false dichotomy between playing it safe and acting boldly by functioning defensively to protect your company from unnecessary risk while advancing your product development. If you’re ready to begin or resume your product development, Pivot delivers the proven experience and industry-leading track record to help make your product vision a successful reality. Contact us today to learn more about how we can support your company’s growth!
Four Questions Your Product Development Partner Should Answer
According to the father of modern project management, James P. Lewis, “Projects do not fail at the end; they fail at the beginning.” Today, Lewis’s words ring truer than ever, and if ever there was a type of project that illustrates his point, it’s new product development.
At Pivot International, we’re a leading product design, development, and manufacturing firm that has helped hundreds of companies deliver successful innovations to market. With one-source expertise and nearly fifty years of experience, we’ve learned that the end success depends almost entirely on its beginning.
Product Development — A Problem That is Scheduled for a Solution
The product development process has been described as a “problem that is scheduled for a solution.” We think this is an excellent definition, though product development is never just a problem to be solved. In fact, it is more accurately understood as an exciting opportunity. But capitalizing on this opportunity requires a proper understanding of the problem — something that most companies seeking a product development partner don’t have.
The reason for this is simple: it isn’t their job. Instead, it’s the job of their product development partner. The trouble, however, is that many product development partners are not any more equipped to properly understand the problem than the customer who is counting on them to solve it. The reason for this is twofold. First, properly understanding the problem depends on knowing the right questions to ask. And second, it depends on having the expertise and technological investment to put the answers into action.
With this in mind, here are the four most crucial questions your product development partner needs to help you answer from the get-go.
1. How do we ensure the product development process will go smoothly, seamlessly, and efficiently?
Successful product development depends first and foremost on high levels of integration across all stages of the broader process: proof-of-concept, prototyping, design, development, manufacturing, and distribution. When multiple companies handle this process in a piecemeal fashion, the chances are high that it will be plagued by various types of breakdowns, blindspots, missteps, and other unnecessary and costly interruptions. But with a one-source partner, the problem your product exists to solve is examined from every possible angle and approached holistically. And because all stages of product development occur under a single umbrella, the result is a smooth, seamless, efficient process.
2. How do we ensure that the optimal technology is being selected for use-case?
Answering this question requires a partner with technical diversity with proven application across a wide range of successful products. Unfortunately, when companies choose a product development partner with a limited technology suite, solutions tend to be prescribed for use-cases that may be viable but not necessarily optimal. At Pivot, we undertake an exhaustive investigation into your product’s use case to ensure it’s perfectly matched with the right combination of solutions.
3. How do we ensure the project is protected from supply chain disruption?
Companies from startups to enterprises are now rightfully wary of supply chain disruption and the risks it poses to product development. While risk is a necessary part of doing business, some partners offer more protection than others. Partners that own their facilities, have access to a diversified global sourcing network, and excel in supply chain management are the safest bets when selecting a partner. At Pivot, even at the peak of 2020’s supply chain disruption, our risk management strategies enable us to offer clients secure, cost-effective sourcing alternatives that help keep their projects on track, on time, and on budget.
4. How do we ensure that our product can be cost-effectively manufactured at scale?
No matter how innovative, attractive, functional, and otherwise market-worthy your product might be, all bets are off if you can’t cost-effectively manufacture it at scale. This is why it’s crucial to properly understand the problem your product exists to solve from a DFM perspective. Design For Manufacturing (DFM) seeks to answer the question of how to reconcile design and engineering investment with manufacturing costs. At Pivot, our in-house DFM expertise might be considered our greatest superpower. Even if you choose a partner that delivers an integrative process, technical diversity, and supply chain security, it won’t be enough without DFM. This is why at Pivot, we see DFM as the “glue” that holds the answers to all other questions together.
Is your company preparing to bring a new product to market? Are you looking for a partner with a stellar track record of success and a reputation for working collaboratively with your team? At Pivot, we are the trusted partner behind some of the world’s most impressive and award-winning products across fourteen markets, including medical, industrial, fitness, consumer, agricultural, security, and more. Contact us today to learn more about how we can ensure your product’s success from day one! We look forward to working with you!
Three Funding Strategies For Capitalizing On Your New Product Development
People with a knack for design are rarely the same people who have the skill set of an elite financier. Sure, there are notable exceptions, real and fictional (think Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, or Tony Stark). But the fame of these figures is a testament to how rare it is for “design genius” and “finance tycoon” to collide in a single individual.
Two Essential Pillars for Successful Product Development
Successful product development rests on two equally important pillars: applied design and innovation, and investment capital. On its own, the first pillar is never enough to guarantee a product’s success. On the other hand, no matter how ground-breaking (and market-viable) the second pillar might be, it too lacks the strength to stand on its own.
For entrepreneurial startups and smaller companies, bringing both pillars together to fund their new product development can be a daunting challenge.
At Pivot International, we’re a one-source product design, development, and manufacturing firm that has seen clients deploy an array of successful strategies for successfully securing funding. With nearly a half-century of experience across fourteen industries, we’ve learned that our clients’ ability to raise capital often depends largely on knowing the funding strategies that are right for their needs.
In this piece, we’ll explore three funding strategies and which will give you the most bang for your buck as determined by whether you’re seeking to raise capital in five-, six-, or seven-figure ranges:
Five-Figure Funding Strategy — Bootstrapping
Funding at this level is often a matter of good old-fashioned “bootstrapping,” or tapping into existing resources, including those of friends and family. In practice, bootstrapping is nothing more than self-funding. By this definition, it can include micro-loans, government- or non-profit grants, or community organizations. Bootstrapping works best for ultra-low complexity (non-technical) products and is most often undertaken with credit cards, small business loans, home equity loans, or a line of credit.
Suppose you’re looking for capital in the $5,000 range. In that case, you want to be sure to identify one of the many micro-loan organizations designed for supporting startups or specific demographics (such as women or minorities). If you visit the Small Business Administration‘s website and use the Loans and Grants search tool, you’ll be able to determine whether you qualify for a grant or a guaranteed loan to help you launch your product.
Six-Figure Funding Strategy — Crowdsourcing
Funding in the six-figure range can take several forms. But increasingly, crowdsourcing is proving to be among the most accessible and effective. (And it should be noted that in some cases, crowdsourcing can be a top strategy in the five-figure range as well.) There are now many crowdsourcing platforms to choose from, including Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, and GoFundMe. These platforms have been used to fund many profitable products, including those in the technology sector.
Crowdsourcing is a “strength in numbers” approach built on what can be thought of as a “micro-investment” model. Rather than seeking investment capital from a single individual with deep pockets, crowdsourcing relies on hundreds or even thousands of small donations. For this level of funding, crowdsourcing has the added advantage of letting you bypass the need to commit future equity shares to your investors.
Seven-Figure Funding Strategy — Professional Investors
Medical, industrial, and highly complex consumer products almost always require seven-figure funding. This means you’ll need to go a more traditional route and work with professional investors (angels and venture capitalists). This level of capitalization is a high-stakes game for all parties. For this reason, the bar for proving your product’s market viability will be exceptionally high and will depend on establishing proof of concept.)
Like all elite finance professionals, professional investors make money with money, which means there’s no way around owing your investor a significant portion of your future equity and profits. When pitching to professional investors, many design-savvy and innovative individuals make the mistake of giving a “product presentation,” educating the investor about their product’s features and benefits. Investors are not meeting with you to learn about your product, per se, and it’s essential to come prepared with a very different approach to your pitch presentation.
To identify U.S.-based angel investors, check out Angel Capital Association, which counts more than 330 angel investor groups among their membership. AngelList is another excellent website for connecting entrepreneurs with qualified investors.
Once you secure your funding, you’ll be ready to jump in with both feet to the broader product development process! If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you establish proof of concept and help you take your product from prototype to successful launch, contact us today for a free consultation.
How to Successfully Solve Your Size, Weight, Power, and Cost Equation for Developing a Wireless Product
No matter the specifications of the IoT product your company is bringing to market, you’ll need to make strategic trade-offs to successfully solve your SWaP-C equation (size, weight, power, and cost). A large part of this will depend on understanding the differences between wireless technologies and which is right for your product.
For more complex products, choosing the right wireless technology is rarely a simple one-to-one affair. In other words, a combination of variously configured LoRa, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular technologies is often needed. This means you’ll need to select a product development partner with expertise in all four.
At Pivot International, we help companies worldwide bring successful IoT products to market. With Design For Manufacturability (DFM) expertise that spans fourteen industries — including medical, industrial, and commercial — we bring broad technical diversity and 320,000 square feet across three continents. Our strength lies in taking an integrated approach to optimizing wireless technology applications for your use case and SWaP-C challenge.
LoRa, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular technologies all enable wireless communication between devices. Let’s take a look at each.
LoRa
LoRa is a long range, low power, proprietary wireless platform with geolocation capabilities that is an integral part of IoT networks worldwide. LoRa devices and the open LoRaWAN® protocol support smart IoT applications across use-cases that include smart cities, smart buildings, smart agriculture, smart metering, smart supply chains, and more.
Despite the relative newness of this technology, Pivot has extensive experience with LoRa applications and their integration with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Cellular technologies. This allows us to deliver shorter testing protocols and expedite our partners’ time-to-market.
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi is a wireless networking technology that enables multiple devices and equipment to connect to the Internet without the use of physical cables or connections. For Wi-Fi to function, it needs an ethernet connection to an internet service provider, a modem, or mobile phone with an Internet data package.
The range of Wi-Fi networks is limited by their frequency, transmission power, antenna type, location, and environment. A typical indoor wireless router in a point-to-multipoint arrangement comes with a range of about 60 feet or less. Using directional antennas, outdoor point-to-point arrangements can be extended for many miles between stations. While Wi-Fi is well established, Wi-Fi 6 is the next generation of this technology and holds game-change possibilities for new product development.
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a wireless technology designed to communicate with other devices over short distances. Bluetooth does not require a Wi-Fi or cellular connection to function. Depending on conditions, connectivity extends about 30 feet and delivers a maximum data transfer speed of up to 24 Mbps.
Power usage is an overarching concern in solving the SWaP-C challenge. (The higher the power usage, the faster the battery life of a device is drained.) Bluetooth has a surprisingly small power requirement, meaning that its effect on a device’s battery life is much less than using Wi-Fi or an ethernet connection. Bluetooth and other wireless technologies featured prominently in creating the Zibrio Smart Scale, a CES Innovation Award-winner that our teams at Pivot helped develop.
Cellular
Cellular networks (often called mobile networks) are wireless technologies that depend on signals sent by clusters of land-based cellular towers. Like Wi-Fi, access to the cellular network requires purchasing an internet data package through a cellular provider.
Cellular services can reliably be accessed in any well-populated area. In more remote areas, signal connection often becomes spotty or non-existent. A typical mobile device has enough power to connect with a cell tower up to 45 miles away. However, as with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, the actual range of connectivity can vary widely depending on conditions and the number of towers in a given area. The speed of connectivity depends on the speed of network connection. The better the network connection, the faster data, download, and upload speeds a device is capable of.
One of the cellular products that our teams at Pivot Wideblue are proudest of developing is the Peek Retina. This device is a mobile phone ophthalmoscope and recipient of a European Product Design Award for Best Design for Humanity.
The Intersection of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Cellular
More often than not, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular technologies work together. But how they work best together as configured and optimized for your use case and SWaP-C challenge is the issue. The question of which wireless technologies, and which combinations, are just one piece of a larger puzzle. Cost, size, and weight must also be factored in. Every variable in the SWaP-C equation needs to be looked at in its larger context. This requires an integrated approach to design, engineering, and manufacturing — something a one-source partner is uniquely equipped to deliver.
Are you preparing to bring a wireless product to market and looking for a trusted partner with end-to-end expertise to ensure your success? We are confident we’re the partner you’ve been looking for! With nearly fifty years of experience and a portfolio of internationally award-winning products, we are a proven partner for making your product vision a profitable reality. Contact us today!
Four Perspectives for Simplifying the Process of Making Your Use Case
If you’re preparing to bring a new product to market, you already know your product’s success will depend in large part on establishing a sound use case. As the name suggests, this involves identifying the needs your product is intended to meet, the challenges it’s designed to solve, and the practices and preferences of the end-user. (And then optimizing your product accordingly.)
At Pivot International, we’re a single-source global product design, development, and manufacturing firm with nearly fifty years of experience bringing a big-picture approach to your use case. Deploying the power of our in-house DFM, we approach a use case and the design of your innovation from the perspective of manufacturing constraints and supply chain considerations. This ensures that your product can be cost-effectively manufactured at scale to drive the greatest return on your investment.
Optimizing use cases by following specific design approaches, digital technologies, UX considerations, manufacturing methods, and supply chain challenges is an extensive undertaking. There can be more than a hundred different variables that need to be explored and assessed. (Which requires the coordination of multiple teams and the close client collaboration we’re famous for at Pivot.) But for all its complexity, making your use case doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Here are four basic steps you can take to simplify the process.
1. Context
When it comes to a use case, context is king. If you don’t get the context right, nothing else matters. Context needs to take into account objective, subjective, and systemic factors. For instance, the dimensions and specifications of the product (objective), the cognitive demands of using the product (subjective), and the industries, organizations, and institutions that will be regulating and interfacing with the product (systemic).
2. Effectiveness
Effectiveness is the most practical consideration of a use case and the lowest hurdle to clear for market viability. Effectiveness is essentially the answer to the question, does the product get the job done? (Notice this question is not about how the product gets the job done, or if it gets the job done pleasantly, but simply whether or not the product “works.”) That said, determining effectiveness is rarely as straightforward as it might seem. For this reason, it’s important to dig into the minutiae of what “getting the job done” means from those with boots on the ground (end-users).
3. Efficiency
We’ve all had the experience of buying a product that gets the job done but not as quickly or easily as we expect. If a product is to have any chance of competing in the marketplace, it needs to be both effective and efficient. In many instances, this is a matter of matching the right technology to use case. This is why it’s crucial to select a partner with technical diversity. When your partner has limited technological options available (or only off-the-shelf solutions), the outcome is often this: your product will be developed with a viable technology rather than an optimal one.
4. Engagement
Engagement is the variable of a use case most closely associated with UX (user experience). A product can be designed that is extremely effective and efficient yet uninspiring. While effectiveness and efficiency are primarily utilitarian in nature, engagement tends to be more aesthetic. (Though it’s important to understand that these two considerations necessarily overlap.) The intersection of high effectiveness, high efficiency, and high engagement often results in a kind of “mystique” commonly associated with products that bear the names of Tesla, Google, Apple, and Adobe.
Are you on the hunt to find the right partner to help you develop a new product? Our teams at Pivot are what you’ve been looking for! Our one-source expertise spans more than fourteen industries, six markets, and 320,000 square feet of manufacturing space across three continents. (Including options right here in the U.S. that can help you get offshore supply chain advantages closer to home.) Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you grow your business!
Moving From Viable to Optimal Use-Case Solutions — Three Keys to Creating Profitable Products
Here’s the scenario: you have an idea for a new product. You’ve done your market research, you have a good sense for your product category and use case, and you’ve even looked into and budgeted for the costs associated with bringing your product to market.
But one of the biggest challenges your team has yet to face (possibly without recognizing the need for doing so) involves working out the details of how your product needs to operate and perform. In other words, while you have a clear sense of what your product needs to do, you don’t yet have a clear sense of how it will do this.
Answering this question is crucial to creating profitable products and your company’s ROI. So crucial that it requires a partner with specialized experience in determining the minimum viable products to refine ambiguous requirements.
Though that may sound like a mouthful, it’s just a technical way of saying you need a partner who can help determine not only which materials, technologies, design approaches, and manufacturing methods are most viable for your use case but most optimal. Let’s explore three elements needed for achieving this goal.
An Integrative Approach
Optimizing product development to a particular use case involves understanding how all the different phases of the process influence each other and fit together. When you work with a one-source partner like Pivot International, you’re working with a company whose reputation and strength lie in integrating and optimizing every aspect of the product development process. With our nearly fifty years of expertise across fourteen industries and 320,000 square feet of manufacturing capability worldwide, we have the company-owned resources and proven track record to ensure your success.
The Power of DFM
DFM stands for Design For Manufacturing and is what sets Pivot apart. While all one-source product development firms include design, engineering, and manufacturing capability, Pivot is one of the very few with in-house DFM. (When DFM is outsourced to a separate company, the result is often less than seamless.)
DFM provides the missing link between design and manufacture. The importance of this cannot be overstated. This link ensures design is always undertaken with an eye toward scaleable (cost-effective) manufacturing.
Answering the question of how your product needs to operate and perform isn’t just a design challenge. It’s also an engineering, manufacturing, and larger supply chain challenge. Even though, on the surface, these different aspects may appear to be unrelated, this is simply not the case. From the very beginning, each aspect needs to be considered in the context of the whole product picture. This is the power of a one-source partner with in-house DFM.
Close Collaboration
Pivot is known for its highly collaborative approach. Our teams work closely with your company to understand your specific product vision, needs, and objectives. Once we’ve achieved clarity, we determine the viable materials, designs, technologies, and manufacturing methods needed to meet your product’s minimum requirements.
Using our nearly fifty years of experience, we then strategically distill the optimal from the merely viable. (Optimal from a functional perspective, an operational perspective, an end-user perspective, a cost-savings perspective, and much more.) After this is complete, we document and map various paths for moving forward — along with the tradeoffs between them. We then present this map to you, working together to determine which route you prefer for reaching the final destination.
If you have a product idea, we can help you translate it into a profitable reality. As our portfolio attests, we are behind many of the world’s most successful and award-winning products. We offer a wealth of solutions for almost any product and supply chain need. If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you bring a successful product to market and grow your business, contact us today for a no-cost consultation.
Technical Diversity: The Key to Escaping the Hyperspecialization Trap
Technical diversity — having an extensive range of product solutions for tackling a design or development challenge — is one of the most important things you can look for in a product development partner.
Without the benefit of technical diversity, your company may fall prey to the hyperspecialization trap. While specialization is good, hyperspecialization is not. Hyperspecialization occurs when firms focus too narrowly on excelling in a few ready-made solutions for a few well-defined problems. While this can be a perfectly serviceable model for low-complexity consumer products, it poses at least three significant dangers for innovations that lie outside this narrow category. Let’s take a look at each.
1. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
This well-known adage perfectly expresses the chief danger of hyperspecialization. Without technical diversity, the design challenge and the solutions for achieving it are viewed through a narrow lens. This lens fails to reveal the complexity of the design challenge and the range of expertise, approaches, strategies, and technologies needed for solving it.
At Pivot International, our industry-leading technical diversity comes from nearly fifty years of product development expertise that spans fourteen industries. This technical diversity is among our greatest strengths. It provides us with a wide-angle lens to investigate the design challenge and accurately identify, integrate, and apply the optimal combination of solutions.
2. Innovation is obstructed.
The development of truly innovative products falls outside the bounds of “business as usual.” It involves the exploration of unknowns and multiple iterations of experimentation and testing. By definition, innovation is never a matter of applying ready-made solutions to well-defined problems. Disruptive innovation, in particular, requires questioning the design challenge itself. Rather than asking, “Do we have the right technical solution to this problem?” it asks, “Are we asking the right questions? How might we reconceive this design challenge to reveal the need for a different set of technical solutions than what it may currently appear?”
Firms caught in the hyperspecialization trap tend to take a “cookie-cutter” approach to product development. They work from the assumption that the problem they are tasked with solving is fairly straightforward and that there is only one right solution. (The narrow solution in which they specialize.) Both assumptions prevent them from thinking outside the box. This shuts down the identification of novel or alternative ways forward and obstructs innovation.
3. Solutions can’t be customized to use-case.
Even in the unlikely case that a hyperspecialized firm manages to grasp the complexity of the use case and design challenge at hand, they lack the breadth of technical diversity to devise customized solutions for it. When a partner hyperspecializes, the odds aren’t in your favor that the optimal combinations of solutions will be selected since there are so few choices. Complex products and use-cases require complex, customized solutions, and only a partner with technical diversity can deliver.
Are you looking for a proven partner to help you bring a complex consumer, medical, or industrial product to market? We can help. Our one-source business model, extensive investment in the latest technologies, and 320,000 square feet of manufacturing capability help companies worldwide create profitable innovations. Contact us today for a free consultation. Together, we’ll make your product vision a successful reality.
Wi-Fi 6 Holds Game-Changing Possibilities for New Product Development
If you’ve not yet heard of Wi-Fi 6, it won’t be long before you do. Wi-Fi 6 is the future of Wi-Fi and IoT. With it comes game-changing possibilities for new product development across nearly every conceivable industry and market.
At Pivot International, we are worldwide leaders in the design, development, and manufacturing of products created to capitalize on the rapidly expanding market fueled by this new technology. With nearly fifty years of expertise across fourteen industries and numerous markets, we help our customers seize emerging opportunities related to the rapidly mounting demand for Wi-Fi 6 applications.
Why does this latest technological advancement hold so much growth potential for companies of all kinds? Let’s look a bit deeper to understand the implications.
Wi-Fi 6 is not 5G
It’s important to understand that Wi-Fi 6 and 5G are not interchangeable. Although there is overlap between them (both technologies support improvements in network speed, capacity and, latency), Wi-Fi 6 is a complement to, not a replacement for, 5G.
They are created for very different use-cases. While Wi-Fi 6 is designed to support high-speed, low-latency connectivity for local area networks, 5G is designed to support wide and ultra-wide area networks. In other words, when it comes to real-world applications, Wi-Fi 6 products can work hand-in-hand with 5G.
Defining the Technology
Now that we’ve clarified what Wi-Fi 6 isn’t, let’s define what it is. Wi-Fi 6, also known as 802.11ax, happens when you combine the speed of Gigabit Ethernet wireless with the predictability and reliability of licensed radio. This combination delivers greater efficiency, flexibility, and scalability enabling new and existing networks to support next-generation applications.
This new technology is characterized by four technical changes that are positioning it to go from novelty to necessity.
- Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA)
- BSS Coloring
- Target Wake Time (TWT)
- Multiple Users Multiple Input Multiple Output (MU-MIMO)
Wi-Fi 6 is set to become the new standard
As these new networks expand, businesses will need to migrate their current infrastructure to this new standard. Businesses and consumers will need to adopt devices capable of supporting it. From a biz tech perspective, the advantages include higher speeds, lower latency, and the ability to run and share more information with new wireless APs.
Industry-Wide Applications
With wider channels of 80 and 160 MHz, as many as eight spatial streams, and other ground-breaking features, Wi-Fi 6 presents a wealth of profitable industry-wide IoT and sensor applications. (Both of which we specialize in at Pivot.)
For instance …
- In healthcare, it will be critical for helping companies capitalize on the skyrocketing demand for IoT-enabled medtech with remote imaging and diagnostic capabilities.
- In teaching applications that extend from remedial education to higher learning to security and defense, it will play a significant role. It will provide immersive, virtual learning environments and enable even more realistic simulated training scenarios.
- In manufacturing, solutions connected to Wi-Fi 6 can enable companies to run remote diagnostics and maintenance on the kind of complex equipment found in our 320,000 square feet of tri-continental manufacturing facilities.
If you’re looking for a proven partner with industry-leading experience in wireless tech, a proven portfolio of award-winning IoT innovations, and a proven one-source model for helping you take your product from conception through distribution, contact us today.
To Drive Down the Cost of Goods Sold, Check These Five Boxes
COGS, which stands for Cost of Goods Sold, is the direct costs incurred from bringing a new product to market. It includes everything from raw-materials and components costs, to design and engineering costs, to manufacturing and distribution costs. The objective, of course, is to minimize COGS while maximizing market value, since the larger the difference between the two, the greater the potential for ROI.
For this reason, driving down the cost of goods sold is a crucial aspect of bringing a profitable product to market. With this in mind, here are the five most important boxes to check.
1. “Reverse Engineer” According to Use-Case
In many ways, smart product development begins at the end and works its way backward. Without first starting with the end-user and end market in mind, it’s impossible to establish a robust product definition and use-case for guiding the process to get there. (In other words, you first need to know the destination you’re trying to reach in order to arrive there successfully.)
Taking a reverse-engineering approach to product development helps you map out the best, shortest, and most cost-effective path for delivering the product in question.
2. Identify Strategic Trade-Offs Related to Speed, Scope, and Scale
There’s much more to aligning the product development process with use-case in order to optimize it along a linear path. (That’s the easy part.) The hard part is reconciling these insights with considerations related to speed, scope, and scale of production. (These hold the key to identifying opportunities for strategic trade-offs related to sourcing costs, materials costs, labor costs, production costs, distribution costs, and more.)
At Pivot International, our one-source business model gives us extensive experience with and visibility into every aspect of product development. (Supply chain, design, engineering, manufacturing, and distribution.) We are an “end-to-end” partner with nearly fifty years of product development expertise across fourteen industries and numerous markets. (Including medical, industrial, and consumer.) This enables us to solve the “complex equation” of the larger product development picture and maximize savings to drive down COGS.
3. Dial-In Diversified Sourcing Solutions
Some of the COGS-reducing questions that need to be answered early in the product development process relate to sourcing and raw-materials costs. For example, does your partner have access to a well-vetted, highly diversified global sourcing network, including alternatives to China?
This is important for two reasons. One, by having a wide range of options to choose from, you get the most competitive price on components and raw materials. Second, it offers far greater levels of security against supply chain disruption. Even if you check every other box necessary for driving the cost of goods sold down, if you lose access to the components or materials you need, delays will occur and costs will rapidly mount. At Pivot, we rely on a high diversified sourcing network that spans three continents to securely and cost-effectively service domestic, European, and Asian markets.
4. Optimize Design for Manufacture
DFM (Design for Manufacturing) is a crucial component of reducing COGS. As the name suggests, DFM aims to optimize design for manufacture to ensure it can be cost-effectively produced at scale. When design is divorced from manufacturing considerations, you end up with a product that looks great and performs flawlessly but is unnecessarily expensive to produce. (Which drives COGS through the roof.) Very few partners bring in-house DFM expertise, and by definition, DFM needs to be in-house to integrate with all other aspects of product development seamlessly. At Pivot, our one-source model includes the world’s top DFM talent to help partners, like Zibrio, deliver award-winning innovations to market.
5. Aim for High Volume Production and Flexible Manufacturing
In almost all cases, the costs of manufacturing products at high volume are significantly less than the costs of small production runs. This means that to drive down COGS, you’ll need a proven partner with large-scale production capacity. But you’ll also need a partner with the flexibility to enable you to scale production to real-time market demand. At Pivot, we bring 320,000 square feet of manufacturing capability across three continents. Our many locations are equipped to handle high-volume production, along with flexible production runs for rapidly responding to surges or reductions in demand.
Many businesses miss opportunities to drive down COGS by not knowing which boxes to check when selecting a partner. At Pivot, our commitment to help you identify every opportunity for minimizing COGS in order to maximize your product’s market value and ROI.
If you’d like to learn even more about our strategies for helping you develop a successful product, contact us today for a no-cost consultation. Together, we’ll make your product vision a winning reality.
