Why do many designs fail to form products?

Discussion in 'Projects & Proposals' started by sun, Dec 11, 2024.

  1. sun
    Joined: Sep 2018
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    sun Senior Member

    As someone who studies floating bodies, I prefer information about water rescues because of my drowning experience. I often refer to the unmanned boats for rescuing drowning victims. Too many materials are conceptual designs, but the most widely used products are imitation of U-safe and Emily. Why do many designs fail to form products?
    In addition, is this a direction for innovation and entrepreneurship? For example, I can cooperate with college students, who have wonderful ideas, vitality and dare to practice, such as college students' activity center and college students' entrepreneurship incubation center, to make models and prototypes together.
     
  2. seasquirt
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    seasquirt Senior Member

    Market research, costings, and sales estimates probably stop the development of many products. An idea needs research and development, prototypes, ticking all legal, lawful, and legislative hurdles, then tooling for mass production is very expensive, and you need a mass market to recover all prior costs before you break even and begin to profit. How many people / organisations have enough money and needs, to justify purchasing a product. Then after all that work, someone in another country that doesn't recognise patents, (you know who I mean), may copy it and flood the market with cheap copies of your product, stealing your market, and sending you broke. There are many brilliant ideas out there that need finance to become real, and if you can't get finance you can't make it. College students aren't going to make plastic injection molds or metal pressings, (maybe 3D printing), so again it comes down to money, - lenders, partners or sponsors, companies and shares, and losing control of your product to be able to make it. It's complicated.
     
  3. gonzo
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    gonzo Senior Member

    I have worked in several student research projects. In general, they lack experience to create a marketable product. There are exceptions though. Those are the ones that often quit school and go straight to business; like Bill Gates.
     
  4. sun
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    sun Senior Member

    Does it really take that many steps to go from idea to practice? That much money? Can't we build a prototype and then look for investment?
     
  5. sun
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    sun Senior Member

    You were involved in student research projects. What kind of work were you responsible for? Can't your rich experience make up for the lack of experience of your students?
     
  6. sun
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    sun Senior Member

    What I'm trying to say is that people come together for love and interest. Everyone should be looking forward to the joy of completion, this meaning should be far more than the commission.
     
  7. seasquirt
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    seasquirt Senior Member

    It depends on what they love; some love fame, or money, and do what they can to take over a potentially profitable project that is someone else's idea. Some love a workable solution to a problem and strive to perfect it, for themselves, and even share it for no gain. Teams and collaborations bring together many attitudes, not always compatible, regardless of success or failure. It's a gamble who you work with, their inputs and skills, their foibles and discriminations. Like minded people may help, or want to go off on a tangent. Try a 'go fund me' site, to get money for professional assistance in your direction, ask a club if any are interested in the outcome, or have helpful inputs. Or scrimp and save and be innovative and do it all yourself until you have a product to be mass produced, then look for a way forward with a manufacturing partner. Idealism may get you started, but most likely lawyers will get you to the finish, if it is a big idea. They're not cheap, and neither are factories.
     
  8. BlueBell
    Joined: May 2017
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    BlueBell . . . _ _ _ . . . _ _ _

    Sun,

    Because it's much more complicated than you realize, hence your question.
    Often it's poor management, limited funds, lack of knowledge, over confidence, hubris, economy fluctuations, etc, etc, etc.
     
  9. gonzo
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    gonzo Senior Member

    Yes it takes many steps, time and money. What would you collaborate on? I mean, what are you bringing to the project besides your drowning experience? This may sound harsh, but developing a project is a practical endeavour. Marketable projects are not ideas, but technology that can be manufactured or somehow produced to sell. The belief that an idea is enough is what makes projects fail. In the 1970s there was a company selling pet rocks. It consisted of a small cardboard box with a small rock inside. Girls would adopt them, name them and carry the pet rock with them. That was an idea developed into a technology that could be mass produced, distributed and sold.

    Personal experience can't be simply passed on. If the students don't understand the context of the application, they will fail to come up with a good product. For example, an electric car that I built as a proof of concept became a student project. One of the items the group had to design was a chain drive. The mounting bolts had no access for a wrench or other tool to tighten them. I told them that the sprocket had to allow for an off the shelf tool to tighten the mounting bolts. At the next meeting, they had not complied with a basic requirement. This is the lack of experience of the students with mechanical systems. When I asked them about it, they were surprised that it was the focus of my questions. They thought all the other surrounding ideas they had would make up for a design that couldn't be assembled properly. One of them asked me: "Did you really meant that it was the most important part of the design and therefore the grade?". I am not totally politically correct and forgot I was in a University setting. My answer was: **** yes!. They were shocked, but got a set of sprockets with access holes in them at the next meeting. I think they learned from my experience, but they still lacked the background to design a commercially viable electric car. There are student projects that have promise. Where they usually miss, is the market research and manufacturing process design.
     
  10. comfisherman
    Joined: Apr 2009
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    comfisherman Senior Member

    I've been in on some fairly simplistic work boat builds that were one off designs. The cost of a one off design was maybe 5% of the cost of the component cost list. From the call to the designer to a set of cut files was a couple of days, from the time the nested and cut aluminum showed up to a completed project was about 6 weeks with 2x skill workers pulling long days 6 days a week. That was on a fairly simple rather small vessel (17 feet long single diesel).

    Reality is with modern 3d modeling software it's way easier to have an draw and idea than it is to weld, mold, or build the idea.

    If I'm looking for a new boat, using an established and proven architect firm makes the most sense.

    Passion projects are great, but they come out of the entertainment budget not the business side.
     
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  11. baeckmo
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    baeckmo Hydrodynamics

    AMEN!
     
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  12. Dave G 9N
    Joined: Jan 2024
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    Dave G 9N Senior Member

    Clark's Corvair said in their 1970 parts catalogue that the reason that they didn't reproduce many car parts was that even a simple $10 part cost at least $10,000 dollars just to get the first good part made. $10,000 in 1970 is $80,000 today.

    That old estimate was for a part that was just a copy of an existing part. No cost for design, which can be a major portion of the prototype cost. It has been my experience working on R&D and prototype projects since then is that their rough estimate was entirely plausible.
     
  13. comfisherman
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    comfisherman Senior Member

    I'll give perhaps my most simplistic example.

    I'm making a dingy, it's a one off design borne out of some unique circumstances. Physically I'd be a normal size football lineman, as such don't fit a lot of the old school solid glass dingy. Due the nature of hook and line fishing we've killed an inordinate amount inflatables. Decided to make a small light weight dingy that's scaled up to fit guys my size.

    Ended up taking the bottom shape made popular from our shallow draft boats, the exterior styling of the popular dingy from our area and some features allowing it to accommodate myself and my overgrown crewman. (Namely a significantly beefier transom and more freeboard).

    From sketch to computer drafting was maybe a couple of hrs, then another 30 minutes or so doing the balancing act to make sure it will trim.

    I then had two choices, pay 250 dollars a square foot to have a mold cnc cut, or make it myself. Currently have more time in the sanding for a moderate level surface finish on the mold than it took to do all the design work. Add in building the jig, fairing the mold, laying up the hull, fabricating the seats, finishing and fairing the hull as well as paint and rail installation.

    An off-season fisherman's wage is 0, and I've spread the cost of tools over years of paying projects so let's call that zero as well. Even so the cost in both real dollars as well has man hrs is at least 10:1 that of design cost.

    End of the day it's a labor of love to make my own idea a reality, essentially a 6,000$ solution to an 1800$ problem. Hard enough to rationalize volunteering for my own ideas, let alone for someone else's wild idea.
     
  14. Ike
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    Ike Senior Member

    A quote from the business page on my website.
    The major reason why many beginning boatbuilders fail, is they forget they are running a business!
     

  15. sun
    Joined: Sep 2018
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    sun Senior Member

    You're right. Even if I'm totally altruistic, there's always someone with hope. I feel a lot of pressure.
     
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