Can your product design survive your strategic pivot?
Are you considering a product pivot? Does your pivot strategy require rethinking your hardware strategy? Is your internal development team up to the challenge?
A pivot in product strategy can open exciting opportunities but also deplete precious resources. It’s a balancing act that entrepreneurial leaders must face as they leverage their design agility to achieve a successful product market fit. Efficient engineering and design updates are the name of the game, but these can be complicated by feature decisions made for an entirely different customer.
Client Snapshot: Altopa, Shifting from Consumer to Pharmaceutical-grade Commercial Dispensation
Product Creation Studio recently collaborated with wellness company Altopa to convert their dispensing system from an in-home consumer product to a pharmaceutical-grade system suitable for commercial service. The Oblend technology relies on precision microfluidic metering of cannabinoid compounds to create blends that are personalized on a prescription basis for individual patients.
Altopa CEO and Founder, Nicole Wicker, realized that a Keurig-style home solution stimulated interest from early adopters but the large-scale opportunities were with commercial operators. So COO, Brent Poole, brought a list of needs to the Product Creation Studio team, including increased throughput, ruggedness and reliability of the core storage and dispensing functions.
“Product Creation Studio gave us the engineering firepower to execute this strategic pivot. We weren’t ready to tear up everything and start over. The PCS team understood that and collaborated with us to upgrade core functional components, controllers and chassis.”
Modifying an existing design for a new environment and user can be like remodeling a house of cards. Changes to one component can result in a ripple of necessary updates throughout an entire subsystem. PCS and Altopa worked closely together to recognize the scope of key changes and quickly come to decisions on how to proceed.
“I was impressed with the passion and commitment that the Altopa technical team had for their technology. They were very hands-on during the assembly and test phase, accessing our engineering expertise when and where it made sense. Oblend is their technology but we are proud to have added to its reliability and precision.”
Pivoting Successfully
Only time will tell how successful the Altopa pivot will be. There are strong tailwinds in their industry and strong interest from key customers. Product Creation will be cheering them on and ready to support hardware changes to match further hardware evolutions.
Are you ready to pivot? Here’s a few things to keep in mind:
Recognize the new customer. Your new customer will have different needs and constraints. Be ready to assess what they value.
Evaluate your resources. Assess how much time and money you are willing to throw at the new strategy. You likely have fewer resources and a shorter time window to demonstrate progress than when you started.
It’s not the plan but the planning. The need to pivot doesn’t mean you are bad at planning, it means you identified a better plan with subsequent information. Now is the time to double-down on planning how to use your experience and agility to your benefit.
Product Creation Studio is ready to support organizations as they realign their life science tools, medical devices, instruments and consumer products to match evolving corporate strategies. Get in touch if we can help you!