The Client Perspective

What you see depends on which direction you are looking from.

How many bars?

If you count from the top, there are 10 bars. But there are only 7 bars when you count from the bottom. In this case it is an optical illusion based on how the drawing is constructed. However in real life the same sort of dilemma faces us as engineers when we are looking at Product Development from the technology perspective and the client is looking at it from the Return On Investment (ROI) perspective.

Roger La Salle makes the case in his book “Think New” that the problem with most new product introductions is not the technology. In general, we engineers will find a solution. The risk that usually kills the product is the business risk or market risk. So our focus as engineers is on making the client successful by getting the product to work technically through Innovation and our skill as engineers, but the client’s biggest risk remains maximised the whole time. The business risk is only dealt with when the product is finally being sold in sufficient quantities to cover the development costs and now return a profit.

Those are 2 very different perspectives. It is worth keeping that in mind the next time you are working on a new product.

The image for today’s blog post was provided courtesy of Dr Marc Dussault, The Exponential Growth Strategist who is always on the look out for examples of antimimeticisomorphism, which I am sure you’ll agree this is!

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years. This post is Copyright © 2013 Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd