Just as historical luminaries like Leonardo da Vinci adeptly navigated multiple domains, we seamlessly integrate diverse fields for optimal problem-solving. At Slingshot, we've assembled a formidable development team of experts spanning many scientific disciplines and product engineering domains. From chemists, materials scientists, firmware and software engineers to bioengineers, biochemists, mechanical engineers, and electrical engineers, our development team stands ready to solve your most intricate product engineering and manufacturing problems.
At Slingshot, science and product engineering rely on one another. Our designers translate abstract ideas into sketches and other tangible visualizations. Those sketches propel our engineering team’s prototyping for testing product concepts, visualizing user experiences, and producing devices, processes, and spaces to enhance a scientist’s research capabilities. This ability to create a shared language and represent ideas eliminates communication barriers in multidisciplinary development teams and demonstrates how science-design collaboration can increase the commercial output of scientific research. Effective communication skills coupled with our dynamic project managers allows Slingshot to wrangle the right resources at the right time to bring products to life.
We excel at creating realistic test protocols and conducting non-standard laboratory analysis in the new product development environment. Slingshot maintains a network of laboratories and facilities with highly specialized analytical testing equipment (microscopy, particle characterization, thermal studies, strength and fatigue studies, paper and packaging testing) pilot scale machinery, and toll manufacturing capabilities. Our in-house wet lab is used to conduct a range of foundational chemical and material tests and experiments, as well as pioneering novel papers and coatings by creating handsheets and conducting drawdowns.
Testing at each prototype or formulation iteration is vital for optimization and quality control. Slingshot is adept at determining how to scale up testing to ensure consistency, find a gross effect, gain directional insight, and move forward along the product development roadmap.
Our labs are also used for our unique style of reverse engineering. Here, the goal isn’t to duplicate an existing product, but to figure out how to enhance the performance attributes critical to our client’s goals. Without a meaningful baseline, finding the correct path forward is like throwing darts at a blank sheet of paper – it’s easier to hit bullseye if you see it mapped out in front of you. Once we know which levers to pull, Slingshot creates a bespoke formulation that exceeds the original engineered product and delivers value beyond just an imitation. This strategy creates tangible intellectual property and trade secrets for our clients and enables us to engineer great products that carve new categories or redefine existing ones.
The dynamic relationship between science and technology is evident in their interconnected goals. Science seeks knowledge and understanding. Technology aims to solve practical problems. Companies at the forefront of innovation often fuse science and technology to create revolutionary new products, gaining an edge over competitors, and captivating customers.
Behind every technological breakthrough is a deep understanding of its materials and components. Materials science connects engineering, physics, and chemistry and can hold the key to unlocking new dimensions in product design and manufacturing. Integrating materials science early in the ideation and development process provides businesses with invaluable metrics, helps sidestep pitfalls in production processes, and optimizes products with distinct properties.
Our team members think like scientists. We consider it our full-time job to question assumptions, investigate anomalies, find points of novelty, devise testable hypotheses, probe cause and effect, and run experiments to gain directional knowledge. It’s easier to mix different intellectual fields when they all co-exist in your office; that’s the beauty of Slingshot’s Science and Technology product development team.
Incremental improvements may sound dull – constantly turning over products repeatedly, getting the new model out while starting work on an even newer one. Yet in this way a product’s “stuff” is quietly improved. Year after year plastic replaces steel, glass becomes increasingly resistant to breaking, lighting becomes more energy efficient, electronics become smaller and denser. These incremental shifts fuel continuous technological evolution. Exciting things happen when small advances in one area of application – the first fruits of experimental design – suddenly become large solutions for product engineers stymied in a different area.
At Slingshot, putting the right know-how into product development at just the right time is a key strategy. Often corporations cannot easily work with newness and want to use the tools and equipment they’ve already mastered. Many barriers stand in the way of technological innovation, including project timelines, manufacturing processes and capabilities, quality control, and material costs. Slingshot excels at providing innovative solutions that work within these client-set limitations. New product ideas are useful only if they’ve been fleshed out, reduced to practice, and tested so the production team can incorporate them without breaking stride. Because of this, timing is key. The Slingshot team works to deliver products within the constraints of the business, while also providing a roadmap to key stakeholders for future product evolutions and initiatives that expand further on the product concept, increasing profitability. Only then can successful commercialization be achieved.
Slingshot’s key differentiator in new product development is our mastery of bringing knowledge into the product development cycle at the right time. Slingshot’s product engineers and scientists work directly with our clients to discover the right criteria that will work for and in our client’s organization. Conversely, Slingshot’s team can work in the background, while the client’s engineering and production team remain undisturbed, until the time is right to introduce the criteria-calibrated solution to the larger organization. Slingshot remains up to date on current technological innovations, but we are also constantly exposed to a wide range of industries. This exposure has allowed us to become experts at cross-pollinating solutions from one space with solutions from another.
In the grand narrative of technological progress, the blending of diverse disciplines is the thread that stitches innovation into the fabric of advancement. As industries surge forward, acknowledging the pivotal role of strategy, science, engineering, design, and materials science becomes paramount. From the spark of inspiration to the realization of technological marvels, the collaborative symphony of these disciplines propels humanity toward an era defined by possibility.
“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.”
“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.”
“It was a pleasure working with your team and I’ll look forward to working with all of you in the future!"
