The lightning bolt of inspiration strikes. You reach for the nearest cocktail napkin to capture your brilliant idea before it fades into the ether. You furiously scribble the details with epic broad-brush ideas and remarkable outcomes that would make Elon Musk jealous. Voila: your next big success is in the pipe! Capturing a novel but […]
The lightning bolt of inspiration strikes. You reach for the nearest cocktail napkin to capture your brilliant idea before it fades into the ether. You furiously scribble the details with epic broad-brush ideas and remarkable outcomes that would make Elon Musk jealous. Voila: your next big success is in the pipe!
Capturing a novel but fleeting idea can feel like huge progress, but of course it’s only the beginning of a long and arduous journey to get your product to market. Bringing a hardware product from prototype to market-ready is no small feat. Unlike software development, hardware product development involves physical components, manufacturing challenges, potential integration of hardware+software, compatibility with third-party hardware, and often, significant upfront investment. A single oversight can lead to costly setbacks or even failure. But by taking a risk-based approach to hardware product development, you can navigate this journey successfully.
What is Risk-Based Product Development?
For many product developers, it’s easy to lose sight of the hundreds of nitty gritty details and risks between creating a prototype and ultimately launching your product. This is never more true for complex hardware products where, in addition to basic factors like cost of materials, production, and assembly, you also must consider the potential risks and failures of building the product, risks related to market acceptance and value, and even the risks that your end-user audience may take while using your product.
This process is called “risk-based hardware development” and refers to a design and manufacturing process where potential risks associated with a hardware product are proactively identified, assessed, and mitigated throughout the development cycle, prioritizing efforts on the most critical risks to ensure a reliable and safe final product that delights your target audience.
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In short, risk-based hardware product development means actively considering potential failures and taking steps to minimize their impact before they occur, rather than simply reacting to problems after they arise.”
By uncovering potential risks and defusing them before they cause problems – sometimes called “de-risking” your product – your chances for success increase every step of the way.
Moreover, in the early stages of development, you may accrue technical debt by making seemingly innocuous compromises that save you time and resources, but which can lead to crippling inefficiencies or quality problems down the road. In order to balance long-term performance and reliability with scalable cost, you’ll need to address this technical debt between the prototype and product launch phases.
Treetown Tech’s Five Essential Strategies
Our team of engineers has compiled five essential strategies for using risk-based product development to minimize risk and maximize chances of a successful hardware product launch.
One of the biggest mistakes hardware (and software too for that matter) teams make is skipping market validation. Before you sink time and resources into development, you need to pinpoint your purpose and your audience of passionate early adopters.
Refer back to your cocktail napkin. What inspired you about this product in the first place? Who is your ideal user, and what problem are you solving for them? What will they pay for the product, and is it significantly more than your cost to produce it?
Are there existing options in the market already? Do you intend to be different, better, or both? What is the one thing you can offer that no one else is? If you’re offering something that people can get elsewhere, then narrow your focus and find a way to provide meaningful differentiation. Or, if your strategy is to provide a very similar product but better, you’ll need to define very clearly what makes your product better: is it higher quality, less expensive, longer lasting, more attractive, etc? And to that end, will your product be sufficiently better to compete or beat existing options?
Who are your insanely passionate early adopters — the ones who signed up on your website the moment they heard about your idea? Who will value your product more than anyone else – at least initially? This group of users will be eager members of your alpha test group and will tolerate bugs and defects while you smooth things out. And after they help you refine and polish, they will be your loudest fans and spread the word to a wider audience.
Use customer interviews, surveys, and industry research to refine your target market. A clear understanding of your market niche and your ideal buyer doesn’t just guide your product design; it helps you avoid the costly mistake of building something nobody wants.
The best way to minimize risk is to iterate early and often. Instead of trying to perfect the entire product in one go, focus on building a minimum viable product (MVP) that showcases your core feature(s). In fact, many products are created with only a single feature in mind.
So how do you narrow your feature set to only those most important to your target audience? One way is to build fewer prototypes in each iteration, so you can learn and improve more each time—while being mindful to ensure your product strategy mitigates the right risk and technical debt at the right time. By getting a meaningful product into fewer hands, you’ll benefit by understanding both the product and the market better.
This is particularly important for risk-based hardware products that may have mechanical and electrical components, a variety of manufacturing methods, software, and unique inventions. By launching a small number of higher-cost prototypes in a friendly test environment, you’ll get invaluable feedback on how to improve your product before you send thousands of final products to the manufacturer.
Keep in mind, ‘focused’ and ‘small’ doesn’t mean ‘slow.’ You absolutely don’t need to slow your process down in order to be more targeted. Be intentional, not plodding.
Risk isn’t just something to consider at the start or end of a project—it needs to be a continuous focus. Conduct risk assessments at every stage, from design and prototyping to manufacturing and distribution.
For example, during prototyping, assess whether the materials you’re considering are readily available and cost-effective. In the design phase, use simulations to test how the product will perform under real-world conditions. At every step, ask yourself: What could go wrong, and how can we mitigate it?
Human nature often leans toward doing the easy stuff first. In risk-based hardware development, you will need to resist that urge. Rather than addressing the easiest challenges at the front end, we recommend going after the hardest problem first. Answer the biggest and thorniest questions of technical feasibility before you invest more time and money into the product. Once you have de-risked your biggest challenges, you’ll have more confidence (and often more funding) to tackle the smaller things that follow.
Continuously assess the liability of each risk to decide whether delaying mitigation is justified to maintain speed. Manage this liability by limiting exposure—maximize quality and minimize quantity during each iteration and leverage your early adopter audience to collect user and reliability data. Use insights from testing, user feedback, and a deep understanding of your business model to determine the right time to address deferred risks.
In the early stages of hardware product development, technical debt often arises from compromises made to save time or resources. While these shortcuts may expedite progress, they can lead to crippling inefficiencies or quality issues later. To ensure long-term performance, reliability, and cost-effectiveness, it’s essential to address this debt during the transition from prototype to product launch.
This process involves identifying design trade-offs and their potential downstream impacts, then implementing targeted refinements to resolve critical issues. Effective strategies include prioritizing components or processes that impact scalability, reliability, and manufacturing feasibility. By proactively addressing technical debt, you not only minimize risks but also lay the foundation for a smoother production ramp-up and a more robust product lifecycle.
No team has all the answers, especially when it comes to hardware development. This is where external experts come in. Hiring specialists—whether for industrial design, electronics engineering, or supply chain management—can provide invaluable insights.
Outsourcing isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a strategy for success. Experts bring a fresh perspective, fill skill gaps, and often have the experience to foresee and avoid pitfalls that less experienced teams might overlook.
In fact, think of hiring experts as its own form of risk mitigation. Identifying and addressing points of failure, in advance, before they have a chance to mar your success, is the primary principle of risk-based product development. Partnering with an expert who can de-risk your product faster and more comprehensively can significantly increase your chances of success.
TL/DR: Why Risk-Based Development Works
Launching any type of new product comes with risk. By using a risk-based approach to development, you can minimize the chances of failure while optimizing your product for cost, quality, and market appeal.
Some benefits of a risk-based approach are:
Ready to develop your next hardware product?
Let’s talk about getting your risk-based hardware project from prototype to product launch. Reach out to our expert team of engineers today and we’ll walk you through the process.
You have the vision. We have the team and expertise to get it built. Let's collaborate to innovate, problem-solve, and de-risk every step of the way.
