Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Take care when confusing lab projects with real products. Both are good, but they are not the same.

In all fields of endeavor, we have lab projects and real products. Both can be good. They, however, are not the same. Sometimes product managers and marketers confuse these at their peril.

Students in graduate school have lab projects. They experiment and write their results. Advanced degrees are awarded. Great stuff.

Sometimes, engineers et al have lab projects at work. They experiment and write their results. In wise organizations, the results carefully and painstakingly become real products sold to consumers. In not-so-wise organizations, the results are hastily declared to be products and sold to consumers who then wince in pain and write bad reviews on Reddit et al.

Experiments don’t produce products that are ready for market. Sure, this happens once a century and it works. The rest of the time, it doesn’t work. Real products take time to refine through engineering, testing, redesign, testing, rework, testing, test marketing, etc. Those things can drive people nuts with the time required. Those things certainly raise the cost and resulting price of the final products. Those things also reduce the chance of horrible reviews on Reddit.

Results of lab projects can be quite informative. Information about what is possible is not a consumer-ready product. We can do better than this.