129: The Best Hardware Product Development Processes

With John Carter, Past Chief Engineer at Bose

John Carter was the Chief Engineer for Bose for over 12 years, most notably being the name behind noise-cancelling headphones. After that, he founded TCGen, and has spent 22 years working with some of the biggest hardware brands in the world on improving their product development processes. He is also a fellow writer with me at Forbes. Today, John is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can use best practices from the leading hardware development teams in the world to improve your product design, launch, and scaling journey by understanding what it takes to succeed in the long run, utilizing customer feedback, getting to market fast, and many other development secrets.

Today you will hear us talk about:

• To figure out how to make a great product, he worked all around the world to find out how the best in the world did hardware product development.
• How do you know what areas you should focus on for innovation?
• Innovation is not free, it takes a tremendous amount of work, sustained effort, and a budget.
• Focus on one key innovation!
• Don’t share with customers too early, design through the concept first.
• How do you reduce the risk that is out there?
• Don’t feature creep.
• Get to the market, then reiterate and improve.
• What are the key principles of agile development, and how do they apply to hardware consumer products?
• Empower your team!!
• Never forget the importance of industrial design.
• Try rotating feedback in the hardware.

EPISODE LINKS

John Carter / TCGen Links:

• Website: https://www.tcgen.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcartertcgen/

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

• Website: https://www.ProductStartup.com/
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• Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/ProductStartup/
• Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ProductStartup/
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/ProductStartup/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProductStartup
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MakoInvent

Mako Design Links:

• Website: https://www.makodesign.com/
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Kevin Mako Links:

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Thanks for tuning in! See you next time.