McFilter

I've managed a very quick turn-around with this book - I only got it for Christmas and I've already read it. I found it a bit slow getting going, but that could be because I already know some of the building-a-product side of things, and it was the taking it to manufacture and marketing stuff that really interested me. That's reflected in the fact that my first 'dog-eared' page is almost halfway through the book.

Well worth a read for anyone doing, or thinking about doing, product development. It gives you lots of useful advice without wasting pages of text labouring each point.

Page 73, in the section about whether or not to outsource manufacturing to China

Production volumes should be thousands per month rather than hundreds. It makes little sense to go to China for products with low volumes of fewer than 1,000 items per month, particularly if the product cost is less than $50. Yearly business should be at least $200,000 to $300,000 in the first year and have a good chance of growing to at least a $500,000 or more a year or two later.

Page 76

Ultimately, the best antidote to your product being copied is speeding your time to market, expanding distribution quickly, and working on your next generation product while your competitors are busy copying your old one. The best lawyers and the best patents won't help in the short term, and often are of little value in the long term, particularly with product lives being shorter than ever. Put your money in product development and marketing rather than in lawyers.

Page 85, on choosing a company to partner with in Asia

Make use of the Internet. The Web sites www.alibaba.com, www.globalsources.com, and www.hktdc.com list thousands of manufacturing companies that offer products for sale. However, many of them are trading companies or wholesalers and not the actual manufacturer. You'll often need to dig deeper. Unfortunately, many of the major manufacturers are not listed on these sites.

[...]

Study a company's products; they are its DNA. Buy samples and take them apart. Look at the quality of construction, the circuit board, and the components. This tells you more about a company than anything else. But be sure that the company actually manufactures the product and doesn't sub-contract it to another company. When you arrive for a visit, insist on seeing the product being made.

Page 100, about talking to potential customers or industry experts sooner rather than later

The chance that these discussions will result in a leak to a competitor or to the public is slim. Getting the feedback is more important. Most products fail because they're not bought, not because word gets out too soon.

Page 128

Now, while patents are still important to companies developing products with core technologies such as microprocessors, software technology, and biotech, their value to many consumer products is often much less.

That's because much has changed in today's consumer world, where products are developed in months instead of years and can last less than a year in the market rather than several. Applying for patents for these products may not be a good investment of your time or funds, nor may they have any lasting value. Their utility is even more uncertain with the current disarray in the patent system.

Page 129

But we soon learned that even having patent protection from day one didn't prevent other companies from coming to market. While it gave us about a nine-month advantage and put us in a stronger negotiating position with Palm and Targus, its value was short-lived.

Page 139

As you can see, legal issues permeate the activities of any business. My advice is to be selective in how you use legal services rather than accepting legal advice blindly. But most of all, focus on your product and the schedule and find partners whom you can trust. Get good legal advice, but don't count on patents or agreements to substitute for good business sense.