UNITED STATES—It is impossible to guarantee the success of a new electronic hardware product. However, entrepreneurs can at least minimize the risks of failure by avoiding common mistakes done in the process of product development. This article lists some of the most typical mistakes and suggests ways to avoid them.

Prioritizing a product

Often, entrepreneurs focus excessively on their product and forget about customers with their needs. Yet, the product must be created FOR customers, and they, in turn, do not exist for your product. So, instead of developing a perfect product, you should focus on the needs of customers and the problems your product will solve. In order to avoid this mistake, you can engage your customers in the product development process even at the earliest stages. You can test your product prototype collecting feedback from real potential customers or even launch a crowdfunding campaign for your product, thus ensuring that it is indeed needed and marketable.

Underestimation

Another common mistake of electronic hardware entrepreneurs is the underestimation of product development. Being overconfident, entrepreneurs often ignore potential challenges and obstacles that can arise during product development. Thus, the planned costs and time significantly differ from reality. To avoid this mistake, keep in mind that the development of new products almost always takes longer and requires more costs than anticipated.

Product complexity

Beginners in electronic hardware development often add a wide range of functions and features to their new products aiming to create a ‘perfect’ solution to all the needs of their customers. However, such excessive perfectionism results in a vast amount of time and costs spent on product development. In addition, products with numerous features often do not succeed on the market. To avoid this mistake, begin with the simplest version of your product. Limit its features to the core ones and critically estimate the costs and time necessary for the development of every feature. The estimation will give you an understanding of which functions and features to include in your product and which of them are odd.

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Mass manufacturing 

Finally, one of the most common mistakes in electronic hardware design is the underestimation of the mass manufacturing of a product. Indeed, scaling the product from a prototype to mass manufacturing is a complex process that requires a vast amount of costs and time. So, underestimation of the necessary resources results in unexpected problems and losses. In order to avoid this mistake, consider mass manufacturing of your product from the beginning of its development. In particular, keep in mind enclosure design and injection molding technology needed for mass manufacturing of the enclosure. This technology is rather cost-consuming, so in the case when your enclosure design is too complex, you will spend excessive amounts of money and time on mass manufacturing your product. 

So, here is the list of the top common mistakes in electronic hardware development. Although this list is not exhaustive, we believe that this article will help you to create a successful product with minimal losses. If you want to avoid even more mistakes, keep learning other companies’ experiences or simply hire professionals for your product development.