- Research operations (e.g. universities with technology transfer functions, corporate skunk-works, government labs and entrepreneurial scientists or engineers) create new science, technologies and processes that are intended to have uses in an expected market.
Prototypes are created here mainly to validate the science, technology or process… to show proof of concept.
If the new science, technology or process works as the creators anticipate then there's usually an effort to transfer the technology to an operation that is able to develop the science, technology or process into a viable business possibility.
- Development operations (e.g. companies, investor-development groups, consultancies and entrepreneurs) take validated science, technology and processes and develop them to the point where they can actualize a product, which must meet specific requirements and performance goals for a specific price within an existing, nascent or anticipated market. Usually, a business case is developed in this stage to show that further development of the product anticipates a profit for the investors. There are sub-stages here where prototypes are very important (see below).
Prototypes are created here mainly to validate functionality and performance, with the intent of turning the business possibility into a viable business actuality. But, there is much more value as we shall see later.
When a satisfactory business case can be made and resolved and the implemented technology, science or process (the new or better product) meets the requirements, a transfer of the developed technology is made to production operations.
- Production operations take a validated product (i.e. most of the various requirements and business issues have been confirmed) and scales the operations up to provide for volume and quality production, sales, distribution and post-sales support of the product. This essential technology transfer into the market is a continuous activity throughout a product's life and prototypes are really geared more to production processes, product reliability and market analysis than to technology authentication.
Consequently, prototypes at this stage are quite mature and are mostly used for user and market testing, regulatory testing, quality / reliability testing, training, process development, vendor analysis and as 'learning models' for future products and upgrades.
|
JUMP TO PAGE
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
©2003 Richard M. (Dick) Haney
|
