Traditional product development cycle takes months, years, even decades. It involves the formation of a Product Development Group. If it is a new software, you need a team of programmers. If it is a new equipment, you will need electronics engineers, instrumentation engineers, mechanical engineers and fabrication engineers. Because of the highly technical nature of work involved, employers usually has to train their employees for several months even several years. This involves millions in cost in terms of salary, equipment and operating cost. Small entrepreneurs would wish they can assemble a development team but they don't have the luxury of capital. How could they develop a new product?
Another approach is the Engineer-Entrepreneur Approach wherein the entrepreneur is an engineer or a scientist and he will/can develop his own product. There are few amazing individuals that could do that and we usually call them Inventors. But if you're not an inventor and you don't have money, what do you do? You must realize that "two weeks is a long time.."
"Two weeks is a long time.."
-- Danilo Rey, General Manager, i-ARC System Integrators
As a physics graduate, our options is to either continue with our studies and teach at UP or leave the academe and work at a non-physics job and earn money. I wished there was a way to stay and study/teach at the academe while earning extra money. This rapid product development methodology is meant to tap the skill of science and engineer graduates that choose to stay at the university, providing them with a chance to broaden their experience while earning something extra during their semestral break which last for two weeks.
I started i-ARC System Integrators (http://i-arcsys.blogspot.com) with two friends, Danilo Rey and Edwin Allas, with the idea of rapid product development using a virtual network of technology workers. With just P30,000 in capital, we were able to develop several products such as the autonomous vehicle counter and an automated traffic barrier.
How were we able to do it?
1. We are good engineers and scientists ourselves with almost 40 years of R&D experience between us.
2. We are able to properly define the requirements of the product and the capabilities or expertise we lack to be able to properly design the product. We then look for experts in the areas that we need assistance using the 'techniques' above.
3. A month or two before the semestral break, we start planning the work schedule and activities for the two weeks our expert is available. Even before the activity starts, we determine if our capability is enough to finish the project within two weeks. If not, we look for more experts or more resources.
Actually, we start working even before the two weeks break. Just like Lego blocks, individual components could be developed by individual members at their own pace, at their own time. Design problems are foreseen and solved before hand. The two weeks allotted for development is targeted to be the stage where everything is put together and tested with all the problems at the component level previously solved. If done properly, two weeks will be more than enough time for system integration.
Although this methodology was originally designed for us to be able to tap friends working at the university, we later realize that the time constraint is also true for our friends working in private corporations. They couldn't participate in projects that would require them to be absent for several weeks. However, it they don't have to do it full-time and they would need to work only one weekends, they could consider being part of the development team.
The power of the Internet and modern communication technologies made this sort of collaboration possible. And with it, we open the vast potential of tapping any expert anywhere in the world.
Although this methodology was developed to augment our lack of start-up capital, this methodology is still worth considering even if an entrepreneur has lots of money. Besides the minimal development cost, you get to hire very good people to develop it and the short development time also doesn't hurt either.
With this methodology, entrepreneurs can become technopreneurs and accomplish step 2 to step 5 in the Innovation Chain (see Philippine Innovation System). For the completion of the Innovation System see the next section on Rapid Enterprise Development.
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