Process Techniques for Engineering High-Performance Materials

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Finding Product Opportunity

Which concepts should we develop into products? And, more importantly, which

product opportunities can be ignored or deferred? Why must the character of the

company dictate the R&D organization’s structure and choice of projects?

You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to

them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.

Steve Jobs

In the early 1970s, Philips Electronics led the race to create the digital storage

of music and video. Laser technology allowed rapid access to vast amounts of

digital data on rotating surfaces, compared to the incumbent analog methods.

Commercialization of a consumer product was initially inhibited by the size,

power requirements, and cost of the laser equipment. As their size and price

dropped, digital audio systems became commercially feasible for consumers.

The Philips researchers worked with 300mm diameter glass disks, to store

enough data for full-length movies. In the music arena, stores were cong-

ured to display analog 300mm LP record albums. Marketers were accus-

tomed to the ample graphics display space on the cardboard sleeve. Stereo

system cabinets were designed to accommodate a top-loading turntable and

to store the large albums. In short, the entire music industry infrastructure

was geared around large disk media.

Due to the dense storage capacity of the digital format, a 300mm disk could

hold hundreds of songs, rather than the 10 to 20 songs on a typical record album.

From a technical perspective, this was quite an impressive achievement. The

music industry was less enthusiastic about that approach. They could not imag-

ine a business model to sell prerecorded music in such large units.

When Sony and Philips collaborated on a standard format in 1980, the

compact disk (CD) that we know today became a reality. The 300mm proto-

type shrank to 115mm (later adjusted to 120mm). The music recording com-

panies could sell albums with the traditional number of songs. Seventy-four

minutes of capacity was the benchmark, based on the length of Beethoven’s

9th Symphony. Retail stores were compelled to redesign their display space

and nd new ways to prevent shoplifting. The designers of album cover art

downsized their work to accommodate the new packaging. Stereo systems

shrank in size and no longer required special furniture.

The pioneers of revolutionary new concepts cannot allow paradigms to dic-

tate all of the product features. Carefully consider which product attributes

90 Process Techniques for Engineering High-Performance Materials

exist because they have value and which are artifacts of incumbent technol-

ogy. Never ignore valuable new approaches just because there are compati-

bility objections. This is especially true when those issues are internal to

your organization. Competitors are not constrained.

Radical change within a market segment is often blocked by technical

barriers, such as the early laser equipment. As these limits are removed, a

stagnant concept suddenly becomes viable, allowing the entire industry to

change quickly. It pays to keep track of these constraints so that advances

RULE #49 PREDICTING THE OPTIMAL

NEW PRODUCT IS IMPOSSIBLE