Product Startup Podcast Episode 129: Hardware Development Best Practices

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learned from the past chief engineer at Bose on what you can learn from best

00:00:05 Kevin Mako: practices and product development processes at the biggest product brands in the world.

00:00:13 Narrator: You're listening to the Product Startup Podcast, the show that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors,

00:00:23 Narrator: product developers, manufacturers, and hardware industry professionals. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial

00:00:31 Narrator: idea to getting your product on start. store shelves. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product

00:00:40 Narrator: business. Hosted by Kevin Mako, one of North America's leading experts on hardware development

00:00:45 Kevin Mako: for small product businesses.

00:00:48 Kevin Mako: Now, onto the show.

00:00:51 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today I'm very excited to introduce John Carter to the show. John was the chief engineer for Bose for over 12 years, most

00:00:58 Kevin Mako: notably being the name behind noise-cancelling headphones. After that, he found a TC-Gen and has spent

00:01:03 Kevin Mako: 22 years working with some of the biggest hardware brands in the world on improving their product development processes. He's also a fellow writer with me at Forbes.

00:01:13 Kevin Mako: Today, John is going to share some valuable knowledge in how inventor startups and small manufacturers can use best practices

00:01:18 Kevin Mako: from the leading hardware development teams in the world to improve your product design, launch, and scaling journey by understand what it takes to succeed in the long run,

00:01:26 Kevin Mako: utilizing customer feedback, getting to the market fast, and many other development secrets. Now on to the episode. Hey, John. Welcome to the show.

00:01:36 Kevin Mako: Glad to be here, Kevin. It's quite interesting. For the show,

00:01:39 Kevin Mako: I realized that we had a client and you are also the head of technology for

00:01:44 John Carter: Bose. Not at the same time, but quite an interesting commonality. Exactly. And I started, my first job was at Bose. I studied

00:01:52 John Carter: with Professor Bose and worked with him being a teaching assistant in acoustics. And then he brought me under

00:01:59 Kevin Mako: his wings and he and I work closely together during earlier stages of the company.

00:02:05 Kevin Mako: Amazing. And give us a bit of a background on how you got from there to the major leadership

00:02:11 Kevin Mako: position that you're in today, working with the number of Fortune 500 hardware brands.

00:02:16 John Carter: And what was that pathway now? And give us a bit of a description of what you're doing today. Well, basically the journey started when I was at Bose and I was really

00:02:24 John Carter: trying to improve our execution and product development. And Dr. Bose was just, fantastic in terms of networks and relationships.

00:02:33 John Carter: So we went out and we benchmarked product development across the world and visited companies like Sony,

00:02:40 John Carter: Toshiba, Sharp, a lot of Japanese companies, European companies, and really got some insight into best practices and product

00:02:50 John Carter: development. And I took those. I wanted to do my own thing. And I took some of the lessons that

00:02:56 John Carter: I'd learned from that and really started to focus on a niche area, which is product development

00:03:02 John Carter: consulting, but really on the process side, not on the execution side. And I have such a passion for bringing technology and people together.

00:03:12 John Carter: And to me, this is the hardest product development and product design is how do you get one mindset? Because the technical issues are there,

00:03:20 John Carter: they're rational, but the human factors, you've got to work with a team and so forth. And I was able to basically share my benchmarking knowledge, my metrics

00:03:30 John Carter: with the number of corporations, and one of our first clients was Apple.

00:03:35 John Carter: And I worked with Apple and created with them the ANPP or Apple new product process. And it was built on metrics.

00:03:43 John Carter: That's actually how I got started. But really, as I got into it, and as they realized, they were really looking at how do they scale, how do they grow. How do they execute?

00:03:53 John Carter: And so we worked with them on a very light touch process that enabled them to make decisions faster and more quickly and speed the teams to market without

00:04:03 John Carter: tripping over each other. And then once we did work with Apple, our work expanded to a number

00:04:09 Kevin Mako: of global brands where we really helped them with both innovation and execution. I just have a passion for that area, Kevin. That's incredible.

00:04:17 Kevin Mako: I look forward to talking deeper about these processes that you built in because as hardware startups and emerging product brands,

00:04:25 Kevin Mako: I always want to know for these clients and for the listeners here on the show, what is it

00:04:31 Kevin Mako: the best in the world they're doing in their development processes so that we can try and

00:04:36 Kevin Mako: mimic that and try and learn from what they do well and from the mistakes that may make along

00:04:40 Kevin Mako: the way. You've actually had the opportunity to work with a number of these major brands.

00:04:44 Kevin Mako: Other ones include obviously Amazon's one of the big players that you've worked with, Bose, and of course to work with Apple and many others.

00:04:50 Kevin Mako: but it's incredible for you to actually see this at the highest levels so that we can understand how to apply it today.

00:04:55 Kevin Mako: I want to start with innovation because that's a big one that you've worked

00:04:59 John Carter: with a number of these firms on. How do you do innovation great from what you've seen, both in the process and what those companies actually do to succeed?

00:05:07 John Carter: Yeah, there are a couple secrets. One of the things that I think is probably underplayed and really important is the amount of investment that it takes to innovate.

00:05:15 John Carter: Innovation is not free. And this myth of suddenly a great idea, occurs to someone and they scribble on a napkin and then raise $50 million to do, a new

00:05:25 John Carter: product idea is crazy. That just doesn't happen. Innovation takes sustained effort and a budget

00:05:32 John Carter: to really propel that forward over the many potholes you're going to uncover us if you work on the innovation process.

00:05:40 John Carter: So the first thing is you have to allocate some spending for it. And a rule of thumb I use is about 10% of your product development. You should put in the innovation category.

00:05:50 John Carter: in terms of investment.

00:05:52 John Carter: So, you know, one out of every $10 you really spend on those transformational ideas. The second thing that I think is really important when it comes to innovation is something

00:06:02 John Carter: that I learned early at Bose called adjacency. And that is when you're trying to innovate, don't try and innovate a new technology,

00:06:10 John Carter: a new market, new customers, new features, and a whole set of new challenges. But rather, what do you do well now?

00:06:18 John Carter: And if you were to change one variable to make a step change in your business, but just one variable, what should it be? Should you go after new distribution?

00:06:28 John Carter: Should you look at really a technology leapfrog? But in all cases, it should be adjacent to your expertise. So moving from

00:06:36 John Carter: one category to another where they're close but different is the best way to innovate. You can make

00:06:41 John Carter: bold steps by making small changes, but change just one dimension at a time. And I think your innovation are most likely going to be successful.

00:06:51 John Carter: And the last thing is, don't share it with customers too early. There's a real dilemma about understanding product market fit

00:06:59 John Carter: and is your product idea going to be successful. You first really need to invest time in thinking through the concept itself

00:07:07 John Carter: before you bring it forward to other people look at. This is especially true in new to the world categories.

00:07:14 John Carter: So those are three ideas that I would really recommend that people

00:07:18 Kevin Mako: pursue in terms of investment, adjacency, and deferring customer contact until you have a real idea of what you plan to do.

00:07:27 Kevin Mako: That's incredibly powerful. And those three, they're actually somewhat connected, especially the first two. I love the fact that you coined the concept of bringing it down

00:07:35 Kevin Mako: to your core competency slightly adjacent, not trying to innovate in every different category at once.

00:07:41 Kevin Mako: And this really comes down, especially to new hardware development, and something we see all the time,

00:07:44 Kevin Mako: which is feature creep, trying to be too many things to too many people. It could be featured on the product itself.

00:07:49 Kevin Mako: It could be innovations in the way you're selling it. It can be a new market entrance itself. If you're trying to do all of these innovations together, it's going to be incredibly

00:07:56 Kevin Mako: difficult for many reasons. But that also applies to your concept about the cost of innovation,

00:08:02 Kevin Mako: because the more complicated that you actually plan to develop this, if you're probably

00:08:05 Kevin Mako: to do all these different innovations simultaneously and not really focusing on doing your one core

00:08:10 Kevin Mako: innovation great, it's going to be very costly, probably prohibitively costly to the point where you

00:08:14 Kevin Mako: burn out before you actually get the core innovation that would have been so great, that small incremental difference. And that is what makes such a big deal.

00:08:22 Kevin Mako: I don't think a lot of people realize in hardware, especially, that you don't have to make a terribly ground-shaking new product idea to be a success.

00:08:32 Kevin Mako: You can be just a few percent better than what's out there. And it doesn't necessarily have to be cheaper.

00:08:38 Kevin Mako: It could be cheaper, better, faster, more innovative, more useful, less pain points, you name it.

00:08:42 John Carter: There's a whole laundry list of ways that you could argue that you're a few percent better. But all it takes is a small incremental.

00:08:48 John Carter: shift, and that really aligns back with those three key elements that you've talked about there. Yeah, Kevin, I'm so glad you bring up this whole concept of feature creep, because

00:08:58 John Carter: I think companies confuse agile with feature creep, and the whole idea, especially in

00:09:04 John Carter: hardware development, is do your homework up front and then execute fast and then get it to market

00:09:09 John Carter: and then iterate, but don't spend a lot of time creeping features in the beginning of the program,

00:09:15 John Carter: but actually put down an invention idea, execute on it, give it to the market, they'll tell you where to take those features next.

00:09:24 John Carter: But otherwise, you can just burn up enormous amounts of time

00:09:27 Kevin Mako: and money by not knowing really what you want to do. It's much more sensible to actually do two

00:09:34 Kevin Mako: product iterations than to have one very long, messy product iteration. Particularly powerful in hardware, where of course Agile has been, let's call it,

00:09:43 Kevin Mako: borrowed from the software world with this idea of continual development. Well, the difference between software and hardware is you can't bug fix a hardware piece.

00:09:51 Kevin Mako: Once it's manufactured, that is the thing and it's done. Arguably, in some electronics, yes, there's maybe a hybrid role,

00:09:57 Kevin Mako: but for the actual physical hardware components, there's no bug fix after that gets to market. But there is feedback.

00:10:03 Kevin Mako: That feedback can be used to then apply the concept of Agile to your next version. So you get a few units of, and we're a huge advocate of get even a few hundred units out to

00:10:12 Kevin Mako: the market, especially as a small company, learn from those, and then plan in your actual

00:10:16 Kevin Mako: development in your business case model to do another round, as you said, your second round of

00:10:21 Kevin Mako: innovation there based on real user feedback from people who bought the product and are now

00:10:26 John Carter: giving you real deep feedback into what they like and more importantly, what they don't like,

00:10:31 John Carter: which can really help you guide that, let's call it, the hardware revised agile process to be more in line with how reality works in the hardware innovation space.

00:10:39 John Carter: I'm glad we're talking about agile as it applies to hardware because there's so many misconceptions there and they're actually

00:10:46 John Carter: I think you've probably seen the same kind of errors that I've seen. First of all, if you look at the 12 principles of the Agile manifesto, turns out nine out of 12

00:10:56 John Carter: apply to hardware.

00:10:57 John Carter: It's only a few that don't. And one of them is, you know, you do work in two-week increments or a sprint and that's just

00:11:04 John Carter: not possible with tooling and CAD design and creating hardware projects that are successful. But if you

00:11:11 John Carter: look at all the other attributes of the Agile manifestos, such as getting early customer feedback or

00:11:17 John Carter: such as an empowered team, these apply absolutely to hardware. So I think there's a big myth about application of Agile.

00:11:25 Kevin Mako: It doesn't work for hardware. You're absolutely right. You can't fix it in the field. If you have a defect, you're going to ship a defect. So there's some fundamental differences,

00:11:34 Kevin Mako: but there are also some fundamental principles that you can apply to hardware development and move

00:11:39 Kevin Mako: quickly. Do you want to run through some of those principles that you find have really worked well,

00:11:44 John Carter: especially looking at these bigger levels, like looking at products that are successful on Amazon or Apple products or even the work at Bose?

00:11:50 John Carter: How do those things apply to startups or even scaling product brands that are looking to do that next innovation? That's a really good question.

00:11:59 John Carter: I think the first and foremost is to have empowered teams, you know, to really allow the team to succeed or fail on its own scale, I think, is incredible.

00:12:09 John Carter: And Agile really promotes having a dedicated, empowered, self -directive team. So that, to me, is number one.

00:12:17 John Carter: And then number two has to do with customer contact. Now, in Agile, what they recommend doing is frequent customer contact.

00:12:25 John Carter: In hardware, though, it may make more sense for you to rotate through the type of feedbacks that you get.

00:12:31 John Carter: For example, you may want to get some feedback from your distribution or sales channel or someone that's working as a rep for your firm.

00:12:38 John Carter: And then a little bit later on, you might go to a reviewer, third party that's really on top of the industry, but is not a direct consumer itself.

00:12:47 John Carter: Neither one of those two examples are direct consumers. And then as you evolve and iterate, then it's time to really try it with

00:12:54 John Carter: true customers, people that would potentially buy your product. So I think when you think about

00:12:59 John Carter: integrating customer feedback into your design and thinking about agile, you really need to think carefully about when and who do you expose the idea. is to get feedback from.

00:13:09 Kevin Mako: But getting feedback is really a super idea, but not too early. You need to have crystallized idea and have a clear value proposition.

00:13:18 Kevin Mako: So I think those are some fundamental principles from Agile for Software that I would recommend for every hardware inventor and entrepreneur.

00:13:27 Kevin Mako: I love the concept of empowerment. Just from a design firm angle, we definitely see a fairly

00:13:33 Kevin Mako: strong divide with certain clients that are extremely self-directed, even with very little experience in the field.

00:13:40 Kevin Mako: Whereas others want to learn and understand from some of the best designers in the country on what they've seen over the hundreds of products that they've worked with. And you

00:13:49 Kevin Mako: probably see that quite a bit in your industry as well, whereas you've got so much real, tangible experience, so many people miss the opportunity to simply ask the question,

00:13:58 Kevin Mako: what would you do here? Or they're actually creating processes or even just fundamentally misguiding the development plan to disrupt what could be incredible

00:14:08 Kevin Mako: design or incredible development or incredible advice from some really seasoned experts. And I see that time and

00:14:15 Kevin Mako: time again, I would actually say if I look at a client mix, probably half the clients are heavily, heavily underutilizing that simply as a thought

00:14:25 Kevin Mako: process to say, how can I lean on these experts and how can I rely on some of their experience as opposed to, you know, how can I take my whatever the idea might be and force it.

00:14:35 Kevin Mako: And that's where whether it's working with your design team, which is the perspective there, or whether it's working with your customers.

00:14:41 Kevin Mako: You really have to have a very open mind to your customers. And I see it hand in hand again,

00:14:44 Kevin Mako: probably again, half the clients, when they do get that customer feedback, the first thing that

00:14:48 Kevin Mako: they do, the very first piece of feedback we hear is, oh, this person has no idea what they're talking about. Well, that's a real customer.

00:14:54 Kevin Mako: And they've got real feedback for you. So yes, maybe it is the one outlier, but what ends up happening more often than less is you start to

00:15:01 Kevin Mako: see a pattern. But it takes so much time because the inventor, the designers, the engineers, whatever it might be are so heavily vested into that project.

00:15:09 John Carter: It takes a long time before they open up their mind. They become empathetic. They put themselves in the shoes of that customer and they say, okay, maybe they've said it wrong.

00:15:17 John Carter: Maybe I don't necessarily believe them. But why do they feel that way? Why did they choose those words? And how can we analyze those words to make a better

00:15:26 John Carter: product in the future. Right. So this really brings to mind a couple of examples that are close to heart. And that is in working on the noise cancelling headphones.

00:15:36 John Carter: When we were first inventing it, we thought it was the biggest benefit would be sound quality. You'd have better base, clear highs and the

00:15:44 John Carter: performance would be vastly improved. Well, we took it out to customers and we realized they didn't care about that. What they liked is noise reduction.

00:15:52 John Carter: They didn't care about the sound quality. I mean, they did, but that was in the first order of improvement. And we really listened to them and optimized it

00:16:01 John Carter: for noise cancellation as opposed to its original invention idea. So I think it's really important not to have solution lock.

00:16:09 John Carter: But another problem that I face depots and at other organizations, and it must be a huge problem for you, Kevin, is that every executive thinks they know

00:16:19 John Carter: industrial design. You know, they may not know mechanical engineering. They may not know CAD system, but every executive thinks they know industrial design, but the fact

00:16:29 John Carter: is they don't. And they need to be

00:16:31 Kevin Mako: open enough so that they can really collaborate with creative companies like yourself to really create something that's breakthrough or novel, just not me too.

00:16:41 Kevin Mako: And there are so many people who kind of play the part of industrial design, but on TV only. In reality, these executives need to

00:16:48 Kevin Mako: open up their mind and allow some experts to take some risks. Yeah, it's interesting. You mention that. That's one of those things, right?

00:16:54 Kevin Mako: Everybody feels that they'd be a great politician or a great movie actor potentially, right?

00:16:58 Kevin Mako: But the reality is there's a tremendous amount of skill, let's say most of the time as a caveat that goes into those roles. And industrial design is no different.

00:17:06 Kevin Mako: Keep in mind what an industrial designer does for their entire life, from schooling through to the CAD work that they're doing to all of the work that they're doing in terms of

00:17:15 Kevin Mako: the meetings, their entire job is figuring out what the user wants and what technology

00:17:19 Kevin Mako: is available and a number of other stakeholders like the business model and the manufacturing. costs and on and on. They are the intersection of all these key attributes.

00:17:28 Kevin Mako: Industrial design is basically the hub of your mechanical engineering, your electronic engineering. It has electronics. And of course,

00:17:35 Kevin Mako: all those other stakeholders that we talked about for and a bunch more. That's what they are doing all day every day.

00:17:40 Kevin Mako: So through that, they get a tremendous amount of experience over the years of doing this. I look at our head industrial designers at our firms are 20 plus years of doing this all

00:17:48 Kevin Mako: day every day of their working career. So although it may look like something that everyone can pick up and have great advice on.

00:17:54 Kevin Mako: These people are incredibly talented, not just at understanding what they want. This is an opinion thing, but understanding what various stakeholders want to lead to generally

00:18:01 Kevin Mako: the most successful commercial product for the market, meaning

00:18:05 John Carter: the customers love it. It's well-priced. It's manufactured of a quality grade, and it's scalable. And that is really the core of a good and experienced industrial designer.

00:18:15 John Carter: So I'm a huge advocate for that. And I really appreciate that you brought up. I think you're the first person to bring it up on the show, the sheer value of what

00:18:22 John Carter: specifically an industrial designer does in the overall product development process. I'll add another to your list, which I think is super important, and that is all innovations.

00:18:31 John Carter: We talked about innovations at the beginning of this conversation. All innovations really should do something

00:18:37 John Carter: better. And you're going to have to do something different in order to be better. Otherwise, it would just be me too.

00:18:44 John Carter: Well, who knows better than an industrial designer, how to express that innovation in the physical package.

00:18:51 John Carter: So when a consumer sees that, they actually can see a styling that's different that communicates that innovation so the product sells itself. And so I think

00:19:01 John Carter: that's a fifth element of what a resource like your team can do is you take the innovation

00:19:07 Kevin Mako: and then you express it in design so it telegraphs or signals to a consumer. This is different and it's better and you can see why.

00:19:15 John Carter: So I think that your ability to catalyze an amplify innovation through physical package design and industrial design and styling is something

00:19:25 John Carter: really important that most entrepreneurs should consider.

00:19:29 Kevin Mako: John, much appreciated. And the last thing I'll ask you for before we leave, is there any other words of wisdom, you know, either high level or in the

00:19:35 John Carter: weeds that you want to share before we say goodbye? I just think it comes back to sticking to your guns if you want to innovate.

00:19:42 John Carter: You have to invest and you have to show consistent focus. And you do that and you do adjacent work, you're going to be successful.

00:19:50 John Carter: John, thanks so much for coming on to the show today. Much appreciated and looking forward to talking to you again. Thanks, Kevin. Take care.

00:19:57 Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast, the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market

00:20:05 Narrator: and turn it into a big success. This podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent,

00:20:12 Narrator: the original and leading firm in North America to provide global caliber into in physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and

00:20:21 Narrator: small product business clients. If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to MakoDesign.com.

00:20:29 Narrator: That's ma-k-o-design.com for a free consultation from one of Mako-designs for design studios from coast to coast.

00:20:38 Narrator: Thanks for listening and see you next time.