The Apple Tastes Better When Savored Slowly

Here’s my last blog post – for now – in my series of recent posts on creating enduring products:

Lesson: Make sure that first bite isn’t more than you can chew.

I’ll tell you something we don’t necessarily broadcast to the outside world:  the first two product concepts for our very successful Model 4200-SCS platform, which were based in part on input from customer focus groups, didn’t receive top management approval. Quite simply, their scope was too large to succeed in a reasonable time—it was just too big of a bite. Despite the undeniable value of their insights, customers in focus groups often have no concept of what it takes to bring a sophisticated system of this type to market.

During concept development, it’s critical to invest your energy in making sure you have a complete and compelling narrative to present to top management and that it’s presented in such a way that they can readily see how it will be carried through to completion. The development team’s early mistake was thinking about it like engineers (the “coolness” and technology of the measurements involved) rather than like top managers (is this a do-able product in a reasonable timeframe?).

The development team spent a lot of time “descoping” the project, whittling it down to a manageable level of technical risk. However, what finally convinced top managers that the Model 4200-SCS represented a viable product concept was our technical and marketing people taking them on the road with them. The conversation took place between Keithley’s technical people and the people who would actually be using the product—top management was a “fly on the wall,” silently absorbing what the lab managers needed and wanted from a product of this type. Over the years, we’ve often found that nothing beats a face-to-face meeting between management and customers for communicating the potential of a new product.

Lessons from Our Customers

Earlier I wrote about creating long-term value in product development, and how to uncover the real insights that lead to products that last for years.  Another “lesson-learned” we’ve thought about involved creating a long-term roadmap for the product, one that begins before Launch Day.

Lesson: You must lay out the upgrade path for the product and factor it into its architecture long before you introduce the first version.

At Keithley during the 1990s, our market research had informed us that those working in semiconductor labs were typically unhappy with the fixed-configuration characterization systems then available. All too often, they were being forced to purchase a completely new system every few years to address new test needs because their existing ones lacked flexibility. We created a test system, the Model 4200-SCS, that was originally envisioned to evolve over time so that we could offer customers a product that protected their instrumentation investment over the long term.

We took that upgrade path concept to heart, and today we write five-year “roadmaps” for the Model 4200-SCS. This roadmap is designed to parallel industry technology milestones as laid out in the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) and our customers’ individual corporate roadmaps.  It’s a concept we’ve applied throughout our product line beyond the Model 4200 to our SourceMeter® Source-Measure Units and other primary measurement platforms.  Mapping our products to industry and customer roadmaps has been a vital strategy in creating enduring measurement platforms, not “me-too” instrument solutions.