BarCampRDU 2008 was a lot of fun. According to the official website (http://www.barcamp.org/BarCampRDU):

A Bar Camp is an unconference where people interested in a wide range of technologies come together to teach and learn. Unfamiliar with the un-conference format? Here’s the idea in a nutshell. Rather than having scheduled speakers, everyone pitches sessions the morning of the BarCamp. Those sessions are put on a schedule, and lots of little groups form for intense group learning. Everyone is expected to teach, to talk, to participate. Yeah, its different from a regular conference - but it works!

The idea of an unconference came together when people realized the best times they were having at conferences were the times between sessions - where people with like interests could meet ad hoc. The goal of BarCamp is to facilitate this type of interaction for an entire day. We supply the food, the space, the wireless, the projectors - you show up to teach and learn.

Much of the discussion at the event involved startups and early-stage projects.

It is important to note that many (if not most) of the attendees at BarCamp are involved in the software, either online or shrink-wrapped. Our firm normally deals with physical projects that involve long lead times and very high prototyping costs. At BarCampRDU many of the projects, or concepts being discussed, revolved around software products that could be prototyped in a weekend. This is a stark contrast to the extremely high prototyping costs that we see associated with many mass-produced physical products.

There was definitely an excitement to the conference that showed through in the interactions between the attendees. This is the type of event that provides encouragement, advice and resources for budding entrepreneurs. It is my opinion that we need more of this type of event to help fuel imaginations and sheer force-of-will behind the next wave of product-driven companies.

Montie Roland is President of the Carolinas Chapter of the Product Development Management Association. Roland is also President of Montie Design, a product development and prototyping firm in Morrisville, NC and the RTP Product Development Guild. You can reach Montie by email at: montie@montie.com

By Montie Roland, RTP Product Development Guild

Morrisville — Our firm receives inquiries from inventors and early stage entrepreneurs fairly frequently.  We tend to break down incoming inquiries into four groups.  The first group is inventors.  Inventors are everyday people with an idea, but no organization to backup the idea.  Entrepreneurs are individuals, or a group of individuals, with an idea for a product and a plan for an organization to develop, produce, and distribute that product.  Start-ups are groups that are actively working on a daily basis developing the product and the organization necessary to make that product a success.  Corporate clients are those in the process of adding another product to their suite of products.

Most design firms are not very interested in spending a lot of time talking with inventors that show up at the door.  Many of these folks have great product ideas, however, most inventors are lacking two necessary elements for product success.  The first is financial support and the second is the lack of ambition and vision.  Product development is expensive.  Once the product is developed, it is even more expensive to produce, stock, distribute, market and sell the product.  Most inventors do not have access to this level of funding and support. 

My impression, after talking with numerous inventors, is that most inventors simply give up, lacking the drive and ambition to make their product concept into a reality.  They struggle with making the transition from being an inventor with an idea to an entrepreneur with a plan and a vision. 

One possibility for failure is that the inventor has a pre-conception that all they need is an idea and a contact with a major corporation.  That corporation will see that product concept and write them a huge check for the inventor’s idea.  This myth is promoted by the “invention submission” companies.  The reality is that most corporations will not even talk to inventors about product concepts that have not been patented. 

Another possibility is that many inventors don’t know what steps they need to take to get a product to market, so are overwhelmed and give up.  There is very little in the way of support structure for inventors and entrepreneurs.  High-flying startups get lots of attention and funding, but that doesn’t help the inventors, entrepreneurs and early stage startups.

Many design firms are hesitant to even provide proposals to inventors and entrepreneurs because so few of those proposals turn into billable hours.  Startups are another example of organizations that often aren’t in a position to purchase professional services.  Most early-stage startups don’t have any product sales, and are not in a position to attract venture capital, so they don’t have the funds to pay a consultant, or design firm, for needed services.  Few consultants, and design firms, are in a financial position to accept the risk of receiving equity (or stock options) from a start up in lieu of fees.

The RTP Product Development Guild is designed to help drive new products to market.  This is accomplished by creating teams of consultants to help in the early stages of the product design.  These six member teams are made of local professionals in the product design community from various disciplines.  Depending on the product, or service, these teams may include disciplines such as engineering, industrial design, software, business, legal, sales and marketing.  This structure allows team members to share the risk of working on these projects while giving the product champion (inventor or entrepreneur) the needed product development support. 

Guild projects last six months and follow a structured format.  The product champion (individual inventor or entrepreneur) meets with Guild team members every two weeks to define, and refine, the product concept into a viable product.  Participation in this structured method helps the product champion overcome many of the pitfalls that haunt entrepreneurs trying to develop a product without professional support.

Information about the Guild is available at:  http://www.rtpproductguild.com.

Montie Roland is president of the Carolinas Chapter of the Product Development Management Association. Roland is also president of Montie Design, a product development and prototyping firm in Morrisville.

The RTP Product Development Guild’s purpose is to provide consultancy services to startups and small companies across a wide variety of specialties. Guidance will focus on commercializing product ideas and technology.

Starting a Product Development Guild has been a journey that has lasted about two and a half years. The first two years were mainly discussions. The last five months have mainly involved laying the groundwork for the guild. We have now moved into a mode where we are starting to recruit members and look at project submissions.

Tom Vass first mentioned the idea to me two years ago at Carolinas PDMA event. At the time, I really didn’t think much of the idea. It took several conversations for me to realize that the problem wasn’t with the concept, but rather in the articulation and execution of the concept. So we spent about two years, off and on, discussing the concept and refining how we articulated a complex sounding concept.

One of the critical questions in developing in the Guild is “why does the concept seem so complex?” The concept, in the simplest form I can come up with, goes something like this:

Consultants, and other product design professionals, band together in a contractual organization. This aspect of the organization most closely resembles a volunteer fire department. Guild members pay quarterly dues and an initiation fee to join. Guild members are proudly displayed in the Guild directory which is available online and in a print format next year.

Product champions submit project proposals to the guild in a structured format. The Guild evaluates each submission and picks the best submissions. The Guild looks for product concepts that are going to help launch product-driven companies. Products that combine technology from two different industries are given priority.

Once a product concept is selected, the product champion becomes the nucleus of a seven member team. Project champions can be inventors, entrepreneurs, serial entrepreneurs, a designee from a start-up company, or a designee from an existing corporation that has a product concept that they would like to spin-off into a new company. Six of the seven team members are product development professionals. These members could come from disciplines such as industrial design, engineering, software, electronics, business management, marketing or sales.

Projects run for six months. The goal of the project is to complete the fuzzy front end design of the product. At the start of the project, the Guild receives options for the client’s stock. These options can only be exercised upon a trigger event such as a sale or initial public offering (IPO). At the end of the project the Guild transfers a portion of those options to team members.

Projects are structured so Guild members spend two to four hours per week on the project. The product champions (client representative) spend fifteen to twenty hours per week on the project.

The team makes a presentation at the end of the project to selected angel investors and venture capitalists. This last step of the project is designed to help the client get funding for the next step in designing and then commercializing their product.

The goal is to complete twenty six month projects per year (ten every six months). This would add twenty new, high-growth companies to the RTP area each year and significantly impact the local economy. This means that the efforts of approximately one hundred and twenty Guild members can help drive the future economy in the regional area for the next ten to twenty years..

I am still struggling with how to present this in a thirty second elevator pitch. This is not an overly complex process when you consider the amount of work to be done. Sometimes I wonder if the previous presentation is trying to explain too much. Maybe the elevator pitch should go something like:

The RTP Product Development Guild is a confederation of product design, and business, who work together to help local entrepreneurs and businesses commercialize their products. The Guild seeks to improve the regional economy in North Carolina by helping create now product driven companies.

Salesmen reading this article are probably wondering why not just use the shorter version first. This is the difference between salesmen and product designers. Engineers and industrial designers often focus on how wonderful, and cool, the details are. A good salesman wants to convey just enough information to close the deal. They know that giving too much information is a possible way to talking your client out of doing business with you. The role of President of the Guild requires me to live in both worlds. This can be challenging at times. Product developers must always keep in mind that successful products find a balance between design and execution.

The chicken, or the egg, syndrome is alive and well at the RTP Product Development Guild. On one hand, we need a strong portfolio of consultants to attract product concept submissions. One the other hand we need strong product concepts to attract consultants. This means that there is going to be slow progress between now and the kick-off of the first project. We have spent the last month lining up product submissions and potential Guild members. The first inquiries about memberships are mostly coming from sales and marketing professionals. Another high interest area is the service providers. We have a class of Guild memberships that are designed to allow service providers to participate in the Guild without having to participate in a project team.

Another concurrent action item is to promote the Guild within the economic development community. North Carolina’s economic development community is heavily focused, and politically invested, in the mode of using massive tax incentives to bring existing companies to North Carolina. There are other efforts that focus on using the universities and community colleges as concentrators of innovation. The Guild believes that there is enough talent, dedication and ambition in the local community to create new product-driven companies. This “believe in the people” approach is counter-culture. The Guild isn’t relying on tax incentives or government grants to drive new products to market. We are relying on our members to work together and help lift new companies from the stage of “I have an idea” to the stage of “we just rented office space”. Dreams are best pursued by the dreamer. It is hard to pursue someone else’s dream. Product champions rev up your dreams, because you now have a home.

Montie Roland is President of the Carolinas Chapter of the Product Development Management Association. Roland is also President of Montie Design, a product development and prototyping firm in Morrisville, NC and the RTP Product Development Guild.    You can reach Montie by email at:  montie@montie.com

How to Price your New Product - Understanding Customer Value

Do you deeply understand the value that your products & services bring to your customers? Do they?

Two simple questions, and key input to your pricing strategy. Yet, most firms cannot answer them with confidence and support their answers with data. It gets even harder to answer this question early in new product development when all that is available is a product or service concept. Yet, this question is answerable in many markets in the concept stage of new product and service development.

The Carolinas Chapter of the Product Development and Management Association invites you to join an evening of networking and learning with Jeff Dupuie, Managing Director of Oakstone Partners:

• Keys to understanding the value your products bring to your customers.
• How to quantify the information.
• How to use customer value model approach to price new products.

Jeff will cover these issues using a case study in how a customer value model (CVM) was used to evaluate a series of new product /service offering concepts that offered the potential of breakthrough performance to customers. The CVM proved to be a useful tool, and in this case, the right tool, to provide insight into which concept offered the most value to customers. The goal of this case study is to provide an overview of the CVM tool and approach, and to demonstrate its use to pricing.

Please join us to exchange points of view, build relationships with your peers and as gain insights from our speaker:

Jeff Dupuie is a Managing Director of OakStone Partners, a local management consulting firm. He has over 15 years experience in management, consulting, and engineering roles. Prior to OakStone, Jeff served as a key member with BearingPoint’s turn-around consulting unit. Prior to that, he served as a Principal with PRTM’s product commercialization unit, leading their Portfolio and Resource Management practices. In industry, he has held commercialization and operations roles with The Ford Motor Company and with Motorola’s Semiconductor Products Sector. Jeff earned the Henry Ford Technology Award for outstanding technical achievement while at Ford. Jeff has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and an MBA, both from the University of Michigan.

Who Should Attend

Entrepreneurs, professionals, and decision-makers at all levels who have interest in new product development, including product managers, marketing managers, brand managers, engineers, and business development managers. This event qualifies as two (2) Professional Development Hours toward PDMA’s NPDP recertification.
Date: Thursday, October 25th, 2007
Time:  Networking & Registration 6-6:45 pm; Presentation and Q&A 6:45 – 8:00 pm; Pizza and drinks.
Location: MCNC Auditorium, 3021 Cornwallis Rd, Research Triangle Park (Durham), NC 27709.

Fees Early bird: $20 members (PDMA and CED), $30 non-members, $15 students and volunteers. $10 surcharge for walk-in. Check only for walk-in.

More information and registration online at

www.pdma.org/carolinas 

or

cjbeale@pdma.org

The term “fuzzy front” end is used by product design professionals to denote the product definition stage of the project. This important stage in product development is often neglected. In this podcast we’ll talk about what the “fuzzy front end” is and why it is important.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking here.

Montie Roland is President of the Carolinas Chapter of the Product Development Management Association. Roland is also President of Montie Design, a product development and prototyping firm in Morrisville, NC and the RTP Product Development Guild.

by Tom Vass, Vice-President, RTP Product Development Guild

The RTP regional economy has a unique set of economic strengths in technology innovation. The basic platform for all the strengths comes from the population of scientists and engineers who live in the region. Raleigh tops America for PhDs per capita for a metro city.

The RTP is geographically the largest research park in the world and is home to more than 130 R&D companies, employing nearly 40,000 workers. The RTP is home to IBM, GSK, Cisco Systems, DuPont and Sony Ericsson.

The high number of PhDs, and the location of large high tech corporations sets the stage for technology commercialization in distinct product areas. Our focus at the Guild is on product development because that leads to new venture creation which leads to new markets.

New markets are essential for wealth creation because persistence in the status quo distribution from current markets of wealth tends to lead to economic stasis. We suspect there is a mutually reinforcing relationship between wealth creation and new product creation, meaning that the more of one leads to the more of the other.

However, this relationship is perfectly symmetrical, which means that the longer the status quo of current markets remains constant the longer the existing distribution of wealth will stay the same. The result will be lower rates of innovation and new product development.

New products do not get created without a lot of effort, and our basic business model addresses how to help entrepreneurs commercialize their ideas. Our approach to new product development is different than the existing players in the region.

We focus attention on independent entrepreneurs who are not affiliated with the tech transfer programs at the local universities. We also target small engineering and manufacturing firms, and spin-offs from the R&D efforts of the larger corporations. We suspect that many of the 40,000 workers in the RTP have great ideas that could turn into great products if they follow the business development model of the RTP Product Development Guild.

During the month of October, we are going to target product development in the 4 areas we think will be most beneficial to regional economic growth. Each product area shares a common technological platform in both design and production, even though the end market users of the products are different.

On each Wednesday evening of October, we will host an educational seminar at our facilities in Morrisville, N. C., to introduce our model to budding entrepreneurs in each product area.

Our selection of product areas are:

1. October 10. Consumer technology products for the mass retail market.

2. October 17. Health monitoring and home health care products.

3. October 24. Sports and recreational equipment.

4. October 31. Homeland defense products.

We will charge a small admission fee, and our seating is limited to the first 20 entrepreneurs who register to attend. We are soliciting the participation of individuals and small companies who are curious about our business model of advice for commercializing technology.

We think that participants will gain benefits from meeting each other, and listening to how others are going about the process of commercializing their product ideas. If the RTP Guild model seems attractive, then the next step would be to apply as a project candidate for one of the Guild’s product development teams.

While commercializing technology is a great objective, we think that the bigger goal for each entrepreneur is to win the Guild’s prestigious annual award for the RTP’s Most Disruptive Product Technology, presented in March of each year. But, you can’t win the prize unless you get in the game.

Registration for the October events is at: www.rtpproductguild.com

by Montie Roland, President - Montie Design

Product design in the RTP area is nothing new. Entities that vary in size from the smallest startup to the largest multi-national companies are engaged in a daily business of product development. These companies don’t practice the art and science of product development in a vacuum. They rely on an infrastructure of local vendors that provide a variety of services and products.

Since moving into our new office space where we added an embedded machine shop, and becoming a part of the RTP Product Development Guild, the Montie Design business model has changed dramatically. The biggest change is how much tighter we have integrated with the product design community around us. Our firm has relied on the services of other vendors for years, so in itself this is nothing new.

The new offices opened in June of 2007. Approximately one month later, we were joined in the office by Brandon Lisk and 101Machine. The office space included a shop and office area big enough for both companies. The rationale for having them in the same space allows both companies to offer more vertically integrated services. Consulting firms operate with remote (across town) vendors every day, but being in the same building allows a greater level of cooperation and coordination, thus relieving pressure from clients to have an in-house machine shop.

What I didn’t expect was how it would change the Montie Design business model. Once 101Machine was up and running, clients began expecting that Montie Design would do several things. The first was to handle the prototype builds directly. Previously we would design the product and create the documentation. Then we would recommend a machine shop and get a quote. The client would then take that quote and issue a purchase order directly to the machine shop (or other vendor). Now clients expect us to manage the prototype build and handle the billing so they just have to create one purchase order. This arrangement makes it more convenient for the client and gives us a higher level of control over the process. However, it also added a new layer of administration that we have accommodated for. As a result, we have begun issuing purchase orders to vendors and tracking them. This was a big change for a small, but growing, company. It was a welcome change because it has allowed us to offer a broader range of services that aren’t directly tied to the number of billable hours. It also requires tighter financial controls because of the larger, and more complex, cash flow requirements.

Not all prototype parts and pieces can be economically produced by a single machine shop. An example was a group of physically large parts that were beyond the normal capabilities of 101Machine. Barnes Machine, in Apex, was able to very cost effectively produce these parts in a very tight time frame. This was a case where we were able to produce a set of prototype parts in an off-site location as a service to our client. JMC Machine is another example of an off-site vendor (also located in Apex). We have worked with Glenn Berry and Howard Nystrom for over a decade to produce parts for customers.

We also work closely with ADR Hydrocut to create complex, flat parts. ADR Hydrocut has two water jet cutting machines. The water jet process uses an extremely thin column (fifteen times the thickness of a human hair) of water mixed with an abrasive to cut complex shapes out of sheets of just about any material. Their business model relies on quick turnarounds of parts. This means that you can usually order a part and receive it within five to ten working days. One of the advantages of our current office location is the close proximity to ADR Hydrocut. This proximity and close working relationship with the owners, Al Ely and Ron Harris, allows us to work hand-in-hand with them, which is critical on projects with tight time restrictions.

The value of the relationship with JMC Machine and ADR Hydrocut has gone far beyond any one project, or one customer for that matter. The personal relationships with the owners of these companies have lasted for over a decade. These are people that I call friends. As it is always critical to not confuse friendship with what is best for the firm, or the customer, I find it wonderful to be able to work with a group of friends whom you can trust.

So how does all of this tie into the subject of a design community? Much of our success as a design firm is related to the availability and performance of the vendors that support us. Without the vendors behind us, we could not serve our customers at the level to which they have become accustomed. Adding a level of vertical integration has allowed us to expand our services, but at the same time has highlighted our need for quality relationships with reliable vendors. Relationships such as these help form the backbone of the product design infrastructure that is such a vital part of product design successes in the Research Triangle Park area.

Hey All,

I just wanted to let you know that our Grand Opening and Expo is coming soon.  Please take an afternoon out to enjoy good food, tour our new facility, and meet local product design/prototyping vendors.  The event is free.

See you there.

Montie

——————————————————————————-

Event: Grand Opening / Pig Pickin’ / Vendor Day for:

Montie Design

101 Machine

Better Business Advice

RTP Product Design Guild

Date: Saturday, 4 Aug 07

Time: 3:00 until 6:30

Location: 400 Dominion Dr., Suite 101, Morrisville, NC 27560

Description: Join us in celebrating the co-location of:

RTP Product Design Guild
Montie Design
101Machine
Good Business Advice

Stroll through the various outdoor vendor booths including:

- Montie Design - product design
- 101Machine - prototype machining
- Good Business Advice - business ansurance and financial mgmt
- RTP Product Design Guild - community-based design
- Pioneer Strategies - public relations
- Fineline Prototyping - rapid prototyping service bureau
- ADR Hydrocut -