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5 Reasons Why San Diego Product Development Is Leaping Ahead

October 4 2011  |   leardonsolutions  |  All Posts, News, San Diego  |  2 Comments

San Diego Bay, Down Town San Diego, Old Town San Diego, Gas Lamp District San DiegoSince Leardon Solutions is headquartered in San Diego, California, it might be interesting to review what makes San Diego an innovative city. San Diego is the eighth largest city in the United States with 1.3 million people but to the local resident it feels like a vibrant, active, and cohesive small city community. This small-city feel along with other success factors unique to San Diego create a successful and innovative product development and product design culture. Below are five reasons why investors, inventors, startup companies, and entrepreneurs should keep their eye on San Diego product development.

1. Weather
San Diego is well known for its year round mild climate. Charts from weather.com show that the lowest average daily low temperature of 48 degrees Fahrenheit occurs in December while the highest average daily high temperate of 77 degrees Fahrenheit occurs in August. Some critics might think that this weather would deter from creative product design, industrial design, or innovative product development but in fact the opposite occurs. The active outdoor nature of San Diego inhabitants has spawned a large cluster of design companies in the action sports businesses. In fact, the business accelerator San Diego Sports Innovators was formed specifically to address the needs of the sports business community in Southern California.

2. Educated Entrepreneurial Residents
According to the LAEDC Kyser Center for Economic Research 2011 report, 40% of the San Diego’s adult population has a bachelor’s degree or higher. This educated work force makes San Diego a hub of research and innovation in biotechnology, communications, and software development and fosters superb product design and development. Aside from this, San Diego is home to some world renowned universities including the University of California – San Diego, San Diego State University, and the University of San Diego. In fact, the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering is ranked the 14 best graduate engineering school in the United States by the U.S. News & World Report. For those aspiring entrepreneurs, the SDSU Entrepreneurial Management Center which is part of the highly ranked SDSU Entrepreneurship Program provides a link between university curriculum and industry hands-on experience.

3. World-Class Product Design Engineers
San Diego is home to many technology, aerospace, medical device, and life sciences companies that have created a pool of engineers well-trained in diverse markets and technologies. The list of well known companies includes Qualcomm, Broadcom, Hewlett Packard, Illumina, Gen-Probe, Care Fusion, General Atomics, Goodrich Aerostructures, and ViaSat Inc., among others. This large cluster of high technology companies requires local support through nearsourcing to local engineering and manufacturing service companies to help companies execute their product design and development strategies. This tier of service companies exists throughout San Diego County and is crucial for the rapid commercialization of technology. These engineering and manufacturing companies service both large and small customers where companies such as D&K Engineering, Outsource Manufacturing, Pharmatek, and Invetech serve the large customers and Leardon Solutions, PDGOncore, and Novo Engineering tend to serve the smaller customers.

4. Regional Manufacturing Base
There is a myth that manufacturing has left the United States and only exists in lower wage countries. Fortunately, this myth is untrue and San Diego product development, industrial design, and product design companies are in close proximity to one of the largest manufacturing bases in the United States. As written in the report Southern California is the nation’s largest manufacturing economy, if the six counties of Southern California (Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Riverside) were a state, they would be considered the third largest manufacturing “state” with 765,000 people employed behind California and Texas.

Not all San Diego product development companies require this highly-skilled U.S. manufacturing labor force. Companies that design and produce products with high labor and assembly content might need access to lower labor wage countries. When low labor wages are needed along with fast manufacturing lead times, lower shipping costs, and low inventories, companies in San Diego have access to the plethora of maquiladoras factories directly over the Mexico border. Companies are also only one day travel time from the enormous manufacturing base located throughout Asia which makes it feasible to utilize strategic outsourcing models that match the product needs with the skills in the region.

5. Startup Support
A local ecosystem of innovative companies developing products can only exist if there is a continuous influx of new companies with groundbreaking new technologies. Without the proper support and assistance base, this ecosystem will not flourish. San Diego is home to CONNECT, one of the world’s best regional programs that connects inventors and entrepreneurs with the resources they need to commercialize their technology. CONNECT is a non-profit organization that originated in San Diego over 20 years ago and has helped in the creation of over 2,000 companies.

San Diego is also home to many technology incubators. One of the leading incubator programs in the San Diego region is EvoNexus, a technology incubator hosted by the leading non-profit technology trade organization CommNexus.

Finally, this local ecosystem requires professional societies that create a venue for companies to network and discuss best practices as well as helps to accelerate and promote the local companies. The local San Diego chapter of the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) is very active in the local community and holds many PDMA events that bring the local business and product design community together. Also, the non-profit organization CleanTech San Diego exists to promote San Diego as a world leader is clean technology development and implementation. These incubators, professional, and outreach organizations are instrumental in promoting San Diego as a leader in product development.

The weather, educated residents, world renowned universities, world class product design engineers, regional manufacturing base, and startup support are fundamental to successful and innovative product development in San Diego. Startup companies, inventors, entrepreneurs, and investors should look to San Diego as a hub for their innovative efforts.

Joseph Donoghue – Leardon Solutions

 

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What is a Production Prototype?

September 27 2011  |   leardonsolutions  |  All Posts, Prototyping  |  Comment

If you are reading this post, you probably understand the basics of prototyping early in the product development lifecycle. In past posts on prototyping, we have discussed the Proof-of-Concept Prototype and the Design Prototype (also referred to as the Form/Fit/Function Prototype) as the first two phases of prototypes in world-class product development. Let’s define these two prototypes again as a refresher:

Proof-of-Concept Prototype: First phase of a product prototype that bears little resemblance to the final product but is used to validate of the idea and prove feasibility. A Proof-of-Concept Prototype is also used for obtaining intellectual property and to show to investors for raising money.

Design Prototype: Second phase of a product prototype that has the functional and aesthetic properties of the final product and is produced using quick fabrication methods. A design prototype is used to work out the final design and manufacturing details and to receive feedback from distributors, buyers, and retailers.

Note that these first two prototype stages are meant to prepare the product for production but that no production tooling or final products using the final manufacturing processes have been built or qualified. The picture below shows the proof-of-concept (POC) and design prototype for the Emada Cigar Clip, a product that is used by golfers and boat enthusiasts to hold their cigars. The POC prototype was constructed using an off-the-shelf plastic wire clip attached to a flat metal plate and an off-the-shelf magnet. The Design (Form/Fit/Function) Prototype was designed to the specifications required of the Emada and machined out of nylon to meet the functional and aesthetic requirements. These two prototypes were used to prove the concept, qualify the design, and verify it was acceptable for the existing market. This was required to prepare for the next phase of prototyping. The inventing blog Ideas Uploaded provides some other great examples of Proof-of-Concept Prototypes in the post How Inventors make Prototypes.

Emada Cigar Clip Proof of Concept and Design Prototypes

There is a third and final prototype stage that fills the gap between prototyping and full scale manufacturing. This is referred to as the Production Prototype.

Production Prototype: The third phase of prototype that is fabricated using the final production design and manufacturing methods. A Production Prototype is used to qualify manufacturing processes and to receive feedback from distributors, buyers, customers, and retailers.

The Production Prototype for the Emada Cigar Clip in different materials is shown below. Due to the expectations of large production volumes of this product, it was necessary to produce a two-cavity hardened steel tool for plastic injection molding. Once the tool was complete, the engineering team at Leardon Solutions approved the tool by performing first article inspection (FAI) and determining the process capability (Cpk) of the molding process. To determine the proper material to be used in the final product, three materials were molded including nylon, POM (polyoxymethylene), and PP (polypropylene). All three materials were tested but only the nylon was qualified as acceptable for use in the expected environment.

Emada Cigar Clip Production Prototypes

You might be wondering why you must build production prototypes if the production tools and assembly line are functioning. There is sufficient work required to qualify the product functionality and the manufacturing processes to prevent defective products from getting into the hands of customers. Performing the proper verification and validation with production protoypes will result in high quality products.

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Apt Innovations in BBC News Article

September 16 2011  |   leardonsolutions  |  All Posts, Customer Profile  |  Comment

Leardon Solutions client Apt Innovations from Northern Ireland is portrayed in the BBC News article Cold winter inspires NI man’s pipe business. Leardon Solutions designed, engineered, prototyped, and qualified the Floe winterizing product for Apt Innovations and currently manufactures components for the product.

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Success Factors of a Product Inventor

September 15 2011  |   leardonsolutions  |  All Posts, Program Management  |  1 Comment

There are many inventors in this world but unfortunately many of their inventions never see the light of day. Why is this? There must be some factors that determine if the inventor will create a successful company from the product idea or if the inventor will fail.

Leardon Solutions worked with Randy Hupp from EcoLeeser from the early days of his invention of a product that helps increase the chances of survival for released rockfish suffering from barotrauma. This invention named the RokLees is pictured below.

EcoLeeser RokLees manufactured by Leardon Solutions

Throughout the process of working with Randy, there were three success factors that contributed to the success of Randy’s invention and hence his company EcoLeeser.

(1) Proper prototyping and product testing: Even the best product ideas can fail if they are introduced to the market prematurely without the proper engineering and testing. Some inventors believe that the best way to develop their product is to go onto one of the outsourcing websites and hire an overseas company that makes similar products. Many times this leads to failure since product prototyping and qualification do not occur. Skipping the prototyping phases will definitely limit the ability to succeed.

Randy understood that in order to be successful, he had to provide a quality product that simply did what it was meant to do and did it well. In order to achieve this quality, multiple rounds of prototypes were necessary. He knew that he had to build prototypes and test them in the hands of actual customers. First, Randy built a Proof-of-Concept Prototype that proved his idea actually functioned properly. While this prototype wasn’t pretty or refined, it proved that his idea was feasible. Next Randy worked with Leardon Solutions to develop a Form/Fit/Function Prototype that not only functioned properly but also met his cosmetic and aesthetic goals. Randy was able to test this product in actual fishing conditions and fine-tuned the design to meet his needs. As Randy started production, he had a design that he knew would function properly across all operating conditions.

(2) Develop a trusted network of suppliers and professionals: Many inventors are worried that their product idea will be stolen if they discuss the invention with potential suppliers and professional service companies. As such, the worried inventor will try to do everything themselves, ranging from the engineering, prototyping, intellectual property, business planning, marketing, and website development. Fortunately for the inventor, most service companies are more interested in helping the inventors than in stealing their idea. The sooner the inventor realizes that there are trusted companies that can help them, the sooner they will be successful.

Randy new his limitations and began to develop a trusted network of suppliers that could help get his product developed and his company formed. Since Randy was new to the world of product development, he hired Leardon Solutions to perform the prototyping, product qualification, and manufacturing. Randy also understood that he had no knowledge in the areas of intellectual property and therefore hired Intercontinental IP to develop his intellectual property filings. These two professional services companies were only a small part of the trusted network that was developed throughout the process of creating the RokLees and EcoLeeser.

(3) Proper use of intellectual property: If an inventor is actually going to move forward and create a company around their product invention, it is important to protect their intellectual property. Many inventors feel that filing provisional patents, utility patents, design patents, or trademarks are a waste of money. When the intellectual property isn’t filed, what happens after the company invests time and money to develop a market for their product only to find that another company is selling a very similar product? All that effort developing the market has gone to waste and this other company can easily leverage the market development work already done. Intellectual property is a critical way to prevent this situation.

Randy filed a provisional patent application which provided patent pending protection for one year and two trademark applications, both of which have been approved by United States Patent and Trademark Office and are in the “publication” phase. As the expiration date for the provisional patent approaches, Randy will need to decide if it is important to file a utility patent in order to extend his invention protection. This will depend on the success of the RokLees product in the marketplace.

In summary, inventors with good product ideas should implement these three simple success factors into their operations to improve their changes of success.

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Alexis McCollom talks about developing the EquiStix product

September 2 2011  |   leardonsolutions  |  All Posts, Customer Profile  |  Comment

Alexis McCollom, owner of Equus Athletics a woman-owned company in North San Diego County, discussed the process of developing the innovative EquiStix product with Debra Simpson on the North San Diego County Business radio show. Equus Athletics creates innovative products for both the horse and the rider. The EquiStix is a cost-effective deep-tissue massage tool for horses that allows owners to perform warmup and recovery massage and was designed, prototyped, and manufactured by Leardon Solutions.

EquiStix flexible massage tool by Equus Athletics

EquiStix horse massage tool by Equus Athletics

 

 

 

 

There are three success factors that Alexis describes:

  1. Product Differentiation: Alexis made sure that her product had feature differentiation from other products in this market. The EquiStix product helps recovery of horse muscles by conforming to the contour of the horse during use.
  2. Effective Prototyping: Alexis worked with Leardon Solutions to create two prototypes.  A Proof-of-Concept Prototype allowed Alexis to evaluate and tune the funtion of the handles and flexibility.  A functional and cosmetically correct Design Prototype was designed and fabricated so that Alexis could get customer feedback and validate her design.
  3. Time to Market: Equus Athletics took one year from product idea to receipt of inventory. This fast time to market allowed Equus Athletics to quickly start receiving revenue.

Please listen to the interview with Alexis in the player below or go directly to Meet Alexis McCollom, Owner of Equus Athletics.

Listen to internet radio with N San Diego Business on Blog Talk Radio

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EcoLeeser introduces the RokLees rockfish release product

July 12 2011  |   leardonsolutions  |  All Posts, Inventing Profit  |  Comments Off

Inventing Profit, a reality-based web series that shows the steps inventors with the entrepreneurial spirit take to get their product to market, announces the premiere of EcoLeeser on August 11, 2011 from 5:30pm – 7:30pm at the Agua Hedionda Discovery Center in Carlsbad, CA.  This show stars Randy Hupp from San Diego startup company EcoLeeser, maker of the RokLees rockfish descending device.The RokLees is a rockfish descending device that assists fishermen in the safe release and recompression of fish suffering from barotrauma.

 

Rockfish (Sebastes) and other species of fish have an internal buoyancy bladder that allows fish to adjust their depth. When fish are caught, they are rapidly brought to the surface and do not have adequate time to equalize their bladders. This rapid air bladder expansion, which can cause death, is known as barotrauma and creates external symptoms such as bulging eyes and pushed out esophagus. When the fish are released using the RokLees, the chances of survival are increased when otherwise they would float away on the surface and eventually die.   This inexpensive, conservation-minded, and easy to use product will help preserve and increase the stock of fish for future generations to enjoy.
 

Inventing Profit is a collaboration between Leardon Solutions, Intercontinental IP, Ecosse Business Group, Syndicating Your Content, and North County Legal and is directed and produced by Pixelscope Productions. EcoLeeser was assisted in its creation by Inventing Profit who provided legal, prototype development, business advice, and manufacturing services. The premiere show is scheduled for August 11, 2011 between 5:30pm – 7:30pm at the Agua Hedionda Discovery Center in Carlsbad, CA. Please come and listen to Randy talk about how he commercialized his first invention and watch the premiere of Inventing Profit with EcoLeeser. Please hit the REGISTER button below to reserve a free ticket for the premiere.

 

Register for Inventing Profit with EcoLeeser in Carlsbad, CA on Eventbrite

 

SCHEDULE:
5:30pm – 6:30pm: Networking hour. Food provided by Inventing Profit.
6:30pm – 7:30pm: Premier showing of Inventing Profit with EcoLeeser

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Leardon Solutions helps Equus Athletics bring the EquiStix to market

June 2 2011  |   leardonsolutions  |  All Posts, Customer Profile  |  Comment

Leardon Solutions has designed, prototyped, and manufactured the EquiStix, an innovative equine massage tool, for Equus Athletics. The EquiStix will be debuted at the Western States Horse Expo at the Cal Expo Fairgrounds in Sacramento, California, June 10-12.

EquiStix product by Equus AthleticsEquiStix horse massage product

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