Marketing in Customer-focused Product Development

Product is the total package of benefits (not just features of products) the customer receives when they buy. It is important for R&D staffs to understand that an industry is a customer-satisfying process instead of a goods-producing process. New product development should be market-driven and customer-focused. It will meet customer needs or creat new customers and markets. 

Marketing is about satisfying customer needs and wants. According to its definition, marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, capturing, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. It normally includes assessing the market (marketing strategy and marketing plan, SWOT analysis), understanding the market (consumer behavior), and targeting the market (segmentation, targeting, and positioning); creating value (product and service), capturing value (price), delivering value (place and supply chain and channel), and communicating value (promotion, advertising, public relations, customer relationship management). Developing new products is usually a charpter in marketing-related books.

Marketing plays a major role in developing a successful product. So marketing knowledge is very necessary to be learned for a R&D staff when starting a product development. Basic principles of marketing can be studied with the classic book Marketing Management by Philip Kotler. There is a good youtube playlist for marketing.

Medical Device Exhibitions

Although company website, online searching, and FDA database can provide a lot of information on the medical device company, exhibitions are still traditional and rich sources to learn medical device industry. Main exhibitions of medical devices are:

• Medica and Compamed
• FIME 
• Medtec
• China International Medical Equipment Fair
• Arab Health

More exhibition information can be found: http://10times.com/top100/medical-pharma

Innovation- beyond Technology and Product Innovation

The medical device industry is a hotbed of innovation. In today's intense competitive and fast-changing markets, innovative products or services have paramount importance for organizations to obtain sustainable competitive advantage either in lower costs or differentiation or both.

R&D staff or manager with technology background is easy to think the technology is the first consideration in innovation. Science and technology is No 1 factor, which may work in the university but often fails in the industry.

According Peter F. Drucker's article "The Discipline of Innovation", innovation starts with a conscious, purposeful search and analysis of new opportunities. The sources of innovation opportunities can be from without a company or industry:

• unexpected occurrences
• incongruities between expectations and results
• process needs
• industry and market changes

Three additional sources are from outside of a company:

• demographic changes
• changes in perception
• new knowledge

Product, process, market, organization, management, service, logistics, business mode, technology innovations can result from these opportunities. These sources will have different importance at different times, areas and firms such as the established and the start-up. New knowledge-whether science, technology or society - is just one in seven sources of innovation. Drucker emphasizes that knowledge-based innovations are superstars of entrepreneurship, demand many kinds of knowledge and long lead times, and is more market dependent than any other kind of innovation.

Product innovation can get idea from above opportunities. For example, aging (demographic changes) is a serious problem for society but it is an opportunity for medical device industry. I believe that the successful product innovation should be customer-oriented, i.e. meet current customers requirement (incremental and sustaining innovation) or create new customers and markets (great breakthrough or disruptive innovation). For medical device industry, customers may include patients, doctors and nurses.

Medical Devices - from Idea, Concept, Prototype Development to Market

A summary of my understanding of medical devices from prototype development to marke.

Business driven product development is a solid base for a company to obtain competitive advantage. Market is the final objective of products.

Medical Devices is a highly regulated industry and need multidisciplinary knowledge and skills involving medicine, materials, chemical, biology, and engineering. A successful medical device need to consider the problem and need, market size and growth, current and potential competitive products, clinical trials, intellectual property, regulatory strategy and insurance reimbursement. Quality and risk management thoughts should be run through the entire process of product development to ensure safety of effectiveness of medical devices.

Medical device development is a high-risk procedure, but the success of the product will give companies, especially start-ups, a huge return and improve the company's core competencies and a wide moat.

Summary of product development phases: