113: How Founders Develop Complex Hardware Products

Product Startup

Feb 9 2022 • 20 mins

Bob Christopher is the founder of Pleo, a massively successful robot dinosaur kids toy with hundreds of parts. This is one of his many products and product companies over a long and successful history in the product innovation world. He was also the director of innovation at Panasonic, and sits on a number of advisory boards at hardware accelerators. Today Bob is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can understand what it takes to design and develop complicated mechanical and/or electronic consumer products, with many development lessons he has learned along the way.

Today you will hear us talk about:

  • Being close with your design and development team
  • Engineering for half full, not half empty
  • Define what the end experience should be
  • Test and refine
  • Prove your worth to the manufacturers
  • Ensure your different types of designers work together
  • Be willing to learn, both the founder, and the designers
  • Build and break your prototypes
  • Listen to your stakeholders, especially further down the development process before you go to market.
  • The journey is part of the fun


EPISODE LINKS

Bob Christopher / Pleo Links:



The Product Startup Podcast Links:



Mako Design Links:



Kevin Mako Links: