Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers (Collins Business Essentials) by Geoffrey A. Moore

Author:Geoffrey A. Moore [Moore, Geoffrey A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-01-28T07:00:00+00:00

New approach: David and his client have been reviewing catalogs and images over the Web for the better part of a week, and they have finally settled on a design. This is a variation on a couple of actual products that David has sketched out with input from the client. They take this design to a fixture wholesaler who supports 3-D printing. The wholesaler works with a freelance designer who is able to scan David’s drawing and convert it into a CAD file. At the same time, the wholesaler works with David to select an appropriate material and finish for the fabricated fixture. Then both the CAD file and the material are fed into the printer, and out comes a finished fixture. If the client still wants to tweak it some more, this can be readily done by updating the file and printing it out again. Further, by adjusting the parameters in the file, fixtures of different scales can be produced, all sharing the same design.

Now, let’s analyze this scenario in light of its implied whole product commitments. There are several:

• The wholesaler works with a freelance designer who is able to scan David’s drawing and convert it into a CAD file. The implication is that there is an industry-standard file format for such designs, perhaps one coming from AutoCAD, sufficiently ubiquitous that its presence can be taken for granted.

• The wholesaler works with David to select an appropriate material and finish for the fabricated fixture. Here the assumption is that there preexists a fabrication material that can meet the demanding standards of David and his client. At the time of this writing, this is one of the weaker elements in the scenario.

• If the client still wants to tweak it some more, this can be readily done by updating the file and printing it out again. This assumes that the materials can be recycled or are cheap enough to discard. It also assumes that the printing can be done quickly enough that there is not a perennial backlog of print orders to get in the way.

• By adjusting the parameters in the file, fixtures of different scales can be produced, all sharing the same design. This assumes that the printer has few limitations on the size of the objects it can produce. Again, at the time of this writing, this is also a weak point in the scenario.

And so it goes. The point is, even a single target customer scenario implies a chain of commitments that any product manager serious about delivering a whole product to an emerging market opportunity must pursue to a satisfactory conclusion.

Now, in the case of a 3-D printer, one can readily imagine a fairly lengthy list of potential target customers and target applications. In addition to interior designers like David, one could imagine:

• Industrial designers prototyping parts for a piece of machinery. They would likely need a variety of durable materials in order to create and test the part under realistic conditions.

• Toy manufacturers creating custom toys.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.