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Driving the Profitable
Growth of Technology and
Manufacturing Companies
SM
www.Rockland-Group.com
May 2008
So You’re Ready to Introduce That New
Technology
So You’re Ready to Introduce That New
Technology
Congratulations. Your company has just
developed a new technology and you just can’t
wait to introduce it into the market. This
technology is so new, so novel, and so
compelling you just know it will launch your
company to the next level. Before you start writing
checks and making promises maybe it would be
beneficial to review three vital areas.
• The Technology
• The Market
• The Resources
First, take a real, objective look at the technology.
Is the technology really ready to be released to
actual customers in a demanding market? To find
out let’s answer a few key questions.
• Can the technology be replicated? In other
words, can you reliably build more than one using
a documented process and have the end product
meet an established set of test criteria? Having
your most talented engineer or scientist hand
build one or two and ‘tweak’ them to meet a
performance target does not count. There are
countless impractical technologies and inventions
that can be built using these methods. None of
them has grown a company.
• Does the technology consist of components that
can be reliably and cost effectively manufactured
and assembled? Arts and crafts were fine at
summer camp but can be fatal in the real world of
manufacturing technology based products. If the
components required to build your new
technology are extremely complex or require
extremely tight tolerances this can often lead to
frequent quality issues, shipment delays, and high
customer support costs. Unhappy customers do
not grow companies.
• Is the technology scalable? There is nothing
more frustrating than watching the orders flow in
for your new product only to realize it can’t be
reliably manufactured in high volumes. There are
numerous technologies that are well suited to low
volume markets but are just not economical or
technically feasible for high volume production.
Think Rolls Royce. You could not realistically
scale the hand made production methods utilized
for these automobiles. Technologies that cannot
scale result in companies that cannot scale.
Second, let’s look at the market. You did perform
a comprehensive market and competitive
analysis, right? Seriously, think of the capital and
opportunity costs you would absorb if you
launched a new technology into the wrong market
or even worse, if there was no market. Some key
questions to answer:
• Who are the customers for this new technology?
Have you talked to them directly? Why do they
need or want this new technology? What are they
using now, since this new technology is not yet
available? How much are they willing to pay to for
this new technology?
• What is the competition for this technology? If
the answer is that this new technology has no
competition, stop development immediately.
Everything has competition. I am competing right
now with many others things that you could be
doing other than reading this article. Do you know
that one of the most difficult competitors to beat in

2. May 2008
So You’re Ready to Introduce That New
Technology
the world is inertia? That’s right, inertia. I don’t
believe that I have to do anything therefore I
won’t. This is especially daunting if your
technology requires a change in habit for a
person or a change in process for a company.
• What is the actual market segment for this new
technology? How large is it? How much of the
market can you realistically expect to capture the
first year? The second? Most markets are
notoriously risk averse, especially to
implementing new technology in any scale until it
is thoroughly proven. That means the mass
market may wait for up to a year or more to see
how the new technology performs. Have you
planned for this?
The third key area is your resources. If you are
successful in launching the new technology you
will need resources to sell, market, design, build,
test, ship, and support your product. Many of
these resources may be new and all of them will
be working with a new technology which means
new processes for everything and lots of training
for everyone. Do not underestimate the
magnitude and cost of this task. No matter how
compelling the technology if it cannot be reliably
sold, marketed, designed, built, tested shipped,
and supported it will not meet your forecasted
targets. These resources need to be in place and
trained before your new technology launch as you
will probably not have the bandwidth to
successfully play catch up after the launch. As
you can see this is quite an investment which is
why answering the questions in the article above
first is so important.
So, as you can see developing and introducing
new technology can be very exciting, very
profitable, and also very dangerous. Many of
these launches, especially for smaller companies,
turn out to be “bet the farm’ decisions as recovery
from a miscalculated new technology introduction
is not always certain. The losses of capital,
opportunity cost, and company reputation can be
irrecoverable. So the lesson here is do the up
front homework. Consider these costs an
investment in a low cost insurance policy against
a much larger potential loss. And remember,
some new technologies should never go to
market. They are just not practical, reliable, or
profitable. So stopping development on these
early in the process outlined above may turn out
to be a prudent and gutsy business decision that
will let you and your company live to fight another
day.
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All rights reserved. Reproduction without
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