What is you're oldest memory

A few days ago, there was a television program about a middle-aged man who is famous for his highest IQ index. Whenever I see people with higher IQ indices, one of the common things differentiating them from ordinary people is the memory capability. The middle-aged man on the TV insisted that he still remembered the moment of his birth. How many people remember the moments of one's own birth Is it possible

My oldest memory goes back 40 years from now. There was a little boy who is full of curiosity. However, the little boy was not even good at manipulating spoons. One day he had seen a huge ship on the sea and then, the fact that a huge metal ship floating on the sea triggered his curiosity of making a ship. He asked his father to procure a sheet of steel. The last moments I remember is a huge sheet of steel lying on the front yard of the house.

A little boy trying to make a metal ship out of a sheet metal with bare hands 40 years ago is developing and manufacturing many complicated instruments. He has all the tools necessary for making new instruments: higher level of education, specialized technologies and experiences.

Education, technology and experience create new products. Precisely, not to mimic existing products, but developing and commercialization of an idea will be explained.

Securing a concept is the very first step.

Prototype development is second job to do.

Releasing commercial products is the last but not the least important step.

In order to secure the concept, configuring the market need should be performed because products without a market need are useless. The first thing to do for configuring a market need is getting and reorganizing the comments from the end users. Needs from the end users such as complaints on existing products are the key factors. It can be always said that the customers are always right.

Here it should be noted that in many cases, not every single end user's comment but the opinion leader's comment is valuable to count. Opinion leader's comment leads the market trend and always inclusively implies common user's ideas. In addition to opinion leader's comment, potential competitor's idea and trend are important.

It is not always the people who brought new ideas of new products. Sometimes, technical advancement leads new ideas of products. For example, times of CRT display no one even dreamed about cellular phones. Technical advancement of LCD pushed the era of cell phones.

Economical leads is one of the market needs to be considered. Existing products with higher prices blocks the common usage and therefore more potential needs of the product. A few decades ago, sliced raw fish meat or simply sashimi was not that popular food in Korea due to relatively higher prices. Many decades of economical leads come up with new technology of cultivating fishes and now people can enjoy sashimi everywhere without paying higher prices.

Sometimes needs for convenience bring new products. Inconveniences to the existing products and/or complicated functions push a new product of simple and therefore user-friendly. Apple's iPod is a good case of convenience needs. Before iPod, there were a lot of different kinds of MP3 players with acceptable functions, prices and/or designs. However, simple functions resulting from manipulating fewer buttons and easy connectivity to applicable software makes iPod the best brand among MP3 players. It is certain that the design and development engineers of the Apple precisely configured the inconveniences of existing MP3 players.

After configuring the market need marketability configuration is the next step.

Marketability is not a complicated or just theoretical concept, but it is a measure of deciding whether a product of a new concept is businesswise valuable to be developed and manufactured.

Size and current status of the market and competitiveness of the new product need to be configured first. Not enough needs or limited needs automatically dump the development of a new product. In addition, in case the competitiveness of the existing product is way too strong, decision of making new products is not feasible.

Types of market also should be defined precisely. Markets for ordinary common people or limited but specialized group of people should be differentiated. If a new product is for special group of people, developmental process, amount of R&D investment, functions and outer appearances, and even the operation of the product should be considered and treated differently from those of everyday common products.

Break-even point analysis is the last step but the most important one in configuring marketability. Except making a new product out of one's pure curiosity or non-profit development such as space ship project leaded by government, investment and profit should be thoroughly configured. Every single engineering or product development company will agree that profits or demands for profits drive the development of a new product.

After configuring market needs and marketability vital functions of the needs should be detailed. Functions such as automation including sensing and actuating, biological process or chemical process such as addition and reaction can be utilized.

In applying many basic vital functions, physical specification and material limitation need to be considered. Physical specification is simply the competitiveness of the new product. New product with cutting-edge technology and better price are key factors of developmental needs, however physical specification such as dimension of the new product and/or throughput or power consumption are still the basic factors to be considered.

When detailing and realizing vital functions material limitation sometimes delays the development or even changes the designs. One of the products under development is the total mercury detection instrument. The most crucial function is to increase the temperature of a small space up to 800 in Celsius as quickly as possible. Here the material of heating limits the instrument design and the development project is being delayed.

Configuring vital functions makes it easy to configure the mechanism. The mechanism is a series of vital functions performed inside the new product. Pressing a single butting by the user triggers a series of actions and the reactions are displayed on the user's interface.

Securing mechanism of a new product is securing concept.

A little boy who was trying to make a ship with just a sheet metal 40 years ago creates and manufactures complicated instruments. New products are developed and manufactured not by higher IQ index people but by people with education, technologies and experiences.

Prototype development and commercial release process will be discussed in the following issues.

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