Case Studies

What Is Our Product
Development Process?

Just what are the stages of the new product development process, and how do new product ideas get from the early stages of concept development to commercialization?
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In the first stage of the product development process, we start by identifying true customer needs. These needs can range from minor inconveniences to major pain points for many customers. To understand the scope of the need, gathering metrics, market research and competitor business analysis data are crucial for honing your market strategy and informing your value proposition. To ensure that solutions are optimized for your business goals and target market, we are careful to ask important questions.

  • Who is the target audience and what are their subconscious needs?
  • What tasks do your users perform and can we see them in action?
  • What problem will my product solve? 
  • Are there other industries that share similar challenges?
  • How will profits grow as a result of the final product?

This research will greatly influence both your marketing strategy and overall product development strategy, and identify existing products that will be competition, helping you find your niche with a successful product, and excel in commercialization. 

For the next stage, it’s time to think both broadly and creatively … letting ideas fly in Brainstorming and Ideation. In this phase, we begin by bringing the development team together for the purpose of divergent thinking and idea generation. Slingshot’s diverse team of engineers, designers, scientists, and strategists work closely with the client’s development team to review market research, identify product success criteria, talk to the right people, and understand who the stakeholders are and what can and can’t change within the company. Success criteria can include factors like relevancy to your target market, manufacturing cost, speed to market, and more. These initial preparations ensure meaningful discussions and ideas are generated. By the day’s end, a typical brainstorming session will have produced perhaps a dozen interesting ideas for further exploration.

In this phase, Slingshot creates the first tangible representations of the minimum viable product, or MVP. This act of moving from the conceptual realm to the concrete realm is achieved through prototyping. A new product's life cycle will have many twists and turns before it ever hits the shelf; concept development and testing help determine the right path for your product on the roadmap to success.

The ability to rapidly prototype, beta-test, and better evaluate your product design before investing in the physical product is essential for improvement, and it turns out to be cost-effective, too. Slingshot utilizes a process that combines iterative and parallel prototyping methodologies, allowing us to rapidly test a series of smaller ideas, gain insights and improve the product design. Slingshot’s engineering team is thorough, fast, and detail oriented; all traits that are critical for creating a successful product.

Testing at each large prototype iteration is vital, since the feedback received is often more critical than the physical product itself. The repetition, or reproducibility of an experimental result, is fundamental in science. Yet, reproducing experimental results is hard. The complex and chaotic nature of biological and other systems imposes limitations on the replicability of scientific experiments. Slingshot’s team of scientists excel in this moment, creating meaningful and realistic testing protocols, designed to quickly test dozens of samples, and robustly test and validate Alpha and Beta prototypes.

“I have to say that I’m impressed…[Slingshot] reviewed all the background information efficiently, zero’d in all the relevant research, created a great research summary, and drafted a correlation protocol that was exactly what we needed.”

Sam Zaidspiner
Irrimax Corporation

“Slingshot has shown me just how much complexity is involved in taking a new paper product from the laboratory to pilot production. I’m incredibly impressed with the Science & Technology team – they really know how to plan and execute a manufacturing trial.”

Ryan D. Liss
Triple Point Innovations LLC

“It was a pleasure working with your team and I’ll look forward to working with all of you in the future!"

Paul Williamson
Proctor & Gamble