Recently Mark Brinkerhoff was a featured guest on Lab to Startup, a podcast showcasing the effort needed to translate lab research to startups.
Mark Brinkerhoff is the President of Fusion Design, a consultancy that has helped design over 1500 hardware products from concept to creation stages. We cover the concept of design, building the requirement documents (MRD, PRD), prototyping, iterations, costs and timelines for prototype development, stories of successful products developed and end with future of outsourcing and local sourcing.
Key Take Aways
Products that don't succeed are generally technologies looking for applications
Design starts with necessity followed by the idea that supports the need.
Successful models- licensing out at the prototype stage or full development of the company
Designing incremental vs first in class products
Market requirement document (MRD) matures to Product requirements document (PRD)
What makes a good requirements document?
How to plan fundraising and timelines as you design a prototype?
How to iterate and number of iterations you might go through? Iteration early/failing fast
One of the greatest examples of market research was done by Toyota on the Prius.
One foot in the past and one foot in the future might be a sweet spot to consider for product developers
about Lab to Startup
Hundreds of thousands of researchers around the world are working to improve life and address imminent threats to humanity. Often, the research ends up in the “Scientific valley of death” in the form of publications and patents that never see the light of the day.
The show has two main goals:
Sharing the stories of those scientists and engineers who have successfully founded startups based on the research at university and national labs.
Highlighting the resources and tools needed to help those aspiring to launch startups in the deep tech space.
