INGENIEUR
Figure 2: Paths to
Commercialisation
from product idea (when the product is
conceived) to the finished product (when
the product is launched into the market).
Time-to-market is critical to organisations
because of competition, and therefore
the general rule is to reduce the time-tomarket as much as possible. The biggest
pitfall of not commercialising research
for an innovative product is that the
product will not be ready for production
in quantities required in an actual
production environment. This in turn, will
result in delays, in which many resources
will be wasted in rectifying the problem
and implementing change orders, which
eventually increases the time-to-market.
As Toyota says, “Always compromise
both product and process integrity” . This
is a warning to researchers, scientists,
inventors and managers who are only
concerned about functionality, which
itself can be compromised by poor
manufacturability. The real time-tomarket will be delayed, or the chances of
product success will be compromised if
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no commercialisation activities are carried
out until all testing is done or clinical
trials are completed. Organisations are
often faced with the dilemma of either
producing the product without adequate
commercialisation or postponing the
product launch in order to complete the
commercialisation stage, which could
involve commercial risks, particularly when
there is a high demand for the product.
b. Product quality: Research or innovative
products that are not commercialised are
likely to have quality and reliability problems
because the research prototypes that
work are built by highly-skilled technicians
and engineers who know how to make
things work (despite manufacturability
shortcomings) with sample sizes that
are probably not statistically significant.
However, the product design must be
sufficiently robust to be consistently built in
production environments and perform well
in all anticipated user environments.