Genius is one per cent inspiration, 99 per cent perspiration said the American inventor and businessman Thomas Edison - a sentiment echoed by this week's interviewees.
Genius is one per cent inspiration, 99 per cent perspiration said the American inventor and businessman Thomas Edison.
This week I've interviewed business owners on the topic of product development, and despite their firms ranging in size from solopreneur operations to having dozens of staff they all agree with Edison's sentiment that there's a huge amount of sweat and toil involved.
Husband and wife India and Steven Korner are the founders of Wellington-based firm Method, which has developed a recycling station system for offices that was launched on the market in January.
Steven had prior product development experience, having worked at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare for five years where he ended up managing a design team. It was this experience, says India Korner, that helped the couple manage one of the biggest challenges they faced in the development of their own product - transferring their prototype into a production model.
"Funding was another challenge," says Korner. "We sold our house in Auckland and moved to Masterton to put money into the business, and we lived with my parents for a year while we put together money for the deposit on a much cheaper - but very charming - house in Masterton."
Key to kicking off the project, she says, was first gaining an understanding of their potential users; they carried out interviews with office staff and facility managers, and joined cleaners on their shifts to get a clear picture of what their product needed to offer.
Successful products need continuous improvement otherwise someone else will do it. Time to market is one of the most important factors in success, but taking the time and effort to get it right actually speeds up the true time to getting something market ready.
Researching the real market need for a new idea is a crucial first step according to product development veteran Murray Fenton, because it gets rid of the false assumptions about commercial viability that surround many new ideas.
Fenton is the founder and owner of Adept - an Auckland-based company that specialises in developing and manufacturing products for the meat industry - and Adept Medical, a medical device developer and manufacturer. Both companies also develop and manufacture products for other firms.
Fenton echoes Edison when he talks about what it takes to be successful in the product development space: "While the occasional brilliant flash of inspiration can set you on the right path, it's the perspiration that counts," he says.
"Successful products need continuous improvement otherwise someone else will do it. Time to market is one of the most important factors in success, but taking the time and effort to get it right actually speeds up the true time to getting something market ready."
Speed to market is another factor for product development success cited by Shareena Sandbrook, director and marketing manager of Palmerston North-based parking technology firm Frogparking. And often that comes down to funding.
The firm traditionally hasn't sought government funding assistance to develop its products but recently received a grant from Callaghan Innovation to help speed up the development of a wireless guidance system, which it got to market in 14 months.
"Without that funding, it would have taken us four times as long, and by then a competitor could well have slipped in ahead of us," she says.
The stretch that product development can put on a company's resources perhaps becomes more apparent the smaller an organisation gets.
Ben Wilson is a founder and account director at BridgePoint, an IT company that has also developed a voicemail app called Touch Voicemail.
Wilson says developing the app in the small firm (it has three full time staff and one part timer) was challenging because the development process required long stints of concentration - an activity at odds with the firm's core IT services business, which requires handling a raft of customers and their needs.
"Thankfully for about a year our technical director just didn't sleep too much and we broke the back of the major development work," says Wilson. "We were also really cautious about taking on new business and new IT projects in our core business. We focused on repeat business and nothing too large that would detract from Touch Voicemail."
Sally Greed is the solopreneur behind BeSeen, a Tirau-based business that produces high visibility vests and other accessories for dogs.
Greed's high-vis dog vests took two years to refine and get to market, while her latest product - a foam booster seat for small dogs - was in development for most of 2014.
Greed echoes many of the interviewees' sentiments about the importance of gaining early customer feedback to inform product design; she initially supplied her high-vis vests to a Wellington business she knew on a sale-or-return basis, and they in turn provided her with feedback from customers on what they liked or what could be improved with the design.
But those are tasks that also have to be balanced on top of business as usual.
"A new product takes time to develop on top of the usual demands of business - and life," she says. "You also need to finance it upfront, because usually there's a minimum order requirement for the materials that need to be paid for immediately, and any prototypes you make might not be suitable for sale. Generally it's about taking a leap of faith."
India Korner, Method
India Korner and her husband Steven are the founders of Wellington-based firm Method.
We bought a business selling various commercial bins in 2011. After 18 months in the market we spotted an opportunity to develop a new product - the Method Recycling Station, which is made up of individual bins that can be locked together to form a recycling station. We launched that product in January and we sold the first run within three weeks.
What was your background in product development before launching this product?
Steven worked at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare for five years, where he worked up to managing a design team and was exposed to all stages of product development. In particular, he was heavily exposed to a process called 'design thinking' through a colleague and good friend.
Design thinking levels the playing field because it allows you to bootstrap your development process but forces you to find the fundamentals of what the product needs to achieve. That thinking has influenced our focus at Method on having a clear understanding of our customer and what they value.
Can you talk me through the process involved in developing the product?
The first step was understanding who our user would be, which for Method is office staff, facility managers and cleaners who service the bin. We did roleplays and interviews with office staff in three organisations to understand the recycling process, and we did extensive interviews with facility managers to understand their role and how the product would work for them.
We even joined cleaners on their shifts to see the tasks that were involved and any difficulties they had with the current products that were available. This really helped us establish some clear objectives for the product.
We designed 20 different ideas when developing the concept, decided on our favourite concept and developed a prototype. Then we refined the design based on findings of our original research, user testing, industry feedback and the available materials. Our 'smart' feature - the bag retainer - was engineered, and we then had this intellectual property protected through a patent and a design registration.
The challenge then was to make sure the design was fit for manufacture. After some further development last year we finally commissioned four plastic injection mould tools for the four separate components of the bin. We had our first production run at the beginning of this year.
Throughout the process we were also thinking about the brand we wanted, and the product development research helped us identify Method's values that we wanted to communicate.
We came up with the name 'method', then I created the visual identity, business cards, brochures, recycling icons and packaging. I have a degree in graphic design and spent six years working as an office leasing broker at Colliers International, so my focus has been on brand development and selling the bin.
What parts of that journey did you find particularly challenging?
Transferring from a perfectly designed prototype into a production model was challenging, but I think Steven's experience helped him to work methodically through the engineering process.
Funding was another challenge. We sold our house in Auckland and moved to Masterton to put money into the business, and we lived with my parents for a year while we put together money for the deposit on a much cheaper - but very charming - house in Masterton.
Juggling a new business, our existing business and a young family is pretty demanding, but we're lucky to have family support with our children. Once our two boys - they're nine months and three - are in bed the business comes alive again!
Have you tapped into any external sources of support during your product development process?
We're a new business so we were too young to get help from formal agencies, but we were lucky our network of family, friends and former colleagues provided us with support.
My mother, Rosemary Bradford, is a former owner of Colliers International in Wellington and is a key adviser to Method. Dan Ormond at the Ideas Shop in Wellington has also been an amazing mentor - often meeting with us to give strategic advice and offer a fresh perspective.
It was a big risk taking on all the product development work while we were juggling our other operations, so getting outside help with the industrial design and with commissioning the production equipment was pretty crucial. Through Steven's network at Fisher & Paykel we found some great consultants to help us with the design and production stages.
Coming up in Your Business: How do you outsource offshore? What are the options, how does it work on a practical level, and what are some of the pitfalls? If you've got a story to share, drop me a note: nzhsmallbusiness@gmail.com
