The Impact of Prototyping Strategies on Crowdfunding Success

Innovative design and technology startups often struggle to gain market success when launching a new product. Research in business management highlights the impact of strategic marketing to foster launch success. Prototyping plays a critical role in demonstrating the potential of the said new technologies and innovations into the market. Prototypes can engage users or highlight the potential of an opportunity to investors. The design performance impact of prototyping strategies has been evaluated in recent studies. This work explores the impact that strategic prototyping (defined here as the use of techniques such as: subsystem isolation, or scale modeling), has on market outcome. Pilot analysis of two hundred launch campaigns on the marketing and sales platform - Kickstarter.com, is conducted. This database provides clear documentation of the information that is provided to said investors or ‘backers’, and resulting funds received. The relative usage frequency of various strategies is reported from a subset of product launch efforts after which the correlations between the demonstration of the strategies and funding received is calculated. These preliminary observations may support designers in managing project resources while developing prototypes to launch new products.

An Exploratory Investigation of Organizational Antecedents to New Product Success

The authors present a model that suggests that integration between marketing and research and development (R&D), managerial controls, and relational norms influences new product success. The model is tested with a sample of 115 engineers and marketing personnel involved in 19 new product projects for a multinational computer manufacturer. The results indicate that managerial controls influence integration, relational norms, and perceived effectiveness. Integration between marketing and R&D fosters stronger relational norms, perceived effectiveness, and new product success. Relational norms enhance perceptions of effectiveness, yet they have a negative influence on new product success. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for best practice in new product research and application.

Positioning Pharmacy for the 21st Century

There are always high expectations for a new year—and certainly we will have even higher expectations for a new century. To continue leadership in the 21st century, the American pharmaceutical industry must make a stronger commitment to new product research and development and the profession of pharmacy must commit to development of services needed for new, high-technology products and devices that will often be parenterally administered, bulky, nontraditional, patient-tailored, infrequently administered, and device-oriented. It is suggested that pharmacy must initiate efforts to include drug administration as a pharmaceutical service. Other actions are suggested to modify the curricula preparing pharmacists and to recruit a wider variety of students. A number of other professional initiatives are recommended and discussed to position pharmacy for enhanced clinical services. The issue of subperformance by pharmacists is discussed by pointing out that there is a significant difference in what often is, what should be, and what could be pharmacy service.