Innovation

As I get closer to a go/no-go decision on a project, I'm thinking about the difference about overall my vision for the project and the supportive innovations needed to enable the core innovations

The vision combines (in unequal parts) product, core innovation as I imagine it, the application of that core innovation, design, marketing,  developer ecosystem, and business development. The core innovation enables everything else, but it's the application of the innovation that makes it meaningful, useful, and in this case, fun.

This week we're testing initial approaches to the implementation for our specific application, and that's where we'll develop the enabling innovations, which is basically where the rubber meets the road.

The difference is that the enabling innovation happens at the source of real problems only encountered in the making of something, and in a project like this just getting the essence of it right isn't enough; it also has to be safe, the components have to be cost effective at volume, and it has to produce a result that's as good or better than people expect.

Over the past 30 years the US has outsourced so much tech that we no longer make most of what it appears we need in this project. So when we outsource the manufacturing of, say, computer chips  and microcontrollers, we also lose out on the innovations developed during new design, and even the manufacturing processes--where the rubber meets the road. And this is the fun part, which means we're missing out on some of the fun of developing new things.

Everything is cheaper than if it were made in the US (likely), but we also don't fully know what the conditions are in the plants that make them now--I have a lot to learn about that in a short time. This is old news, but it's new to me, and I'll write a bit more about what I learn in the process.