Networking in Product Development

As I'm leading and selling services for subcontracted Product Development, I'm naturally pro networking in R&D. I've been on the consulting side of R&D for 16 years now, and before that some years in R&D on the Customer side of the fence. I don't think there's many companies these days that are relying solely on their own resources in bringing up new products to this world.

But how does it show in my own work and in my own decisions ? OK, selling the subcontracted work of course and providing the best possible experts for my Customers. But in addition to having my own resources, and those within Espotel, I'm also drawing from a range of our own Partners or subcontractors, some of which have been our close cooperators for years and some new ones. It also gives a rationality check for our own work, as the way I see the subcontractors performance, the same way our Customers see us. We want flexibility, easiness and of course prompt and good quality delivery from our Partners, and that's what we must deliver also.

We have about 300 persons at Espotel, all doing R&D design work in projects or at the Customer site. And even so, we still use a lot of resources (don't have the exact numbers, but let's say over 10%) from outside of the Company. Why's that ? Quite frankly, because sometimes there are better experts for a specific task or we just don't always the persons available for a given competence area. And then there are skills needed in projects that we just don't want to hire to our company for several reasons. A fine example is Industrial Designers. ID is needed for most projects, but it is a different market still compared to engineering work, and would need a large pool of talents inside a company before we can say that our service in that area is in a professional level. There are companies focused on that area, with a replacing designer if something happens for a projects designer, and with help and a second opinion available in-house when needed. We can get that service when needed, so no need for us to get into that.

But we also use Partners for our core design competences, namely Software Design in several layers and for Electronics design and Mechanics design. Why ? Well, sometimes there's need for a very dedicated narrow competence that just isn't available at Espotel and sometimes we just don't have designers available in a needed location or at all. So it's pool handling, no need to have personnel for the maximum possible load always and for all specific competence areas.  And it's talent handling also, not all wisdom will ever be in one company.

Those reasons probably don't differ that much from our Customer's reasons for using subcontracting in R&D :)

With the help of our network, we are able to offer a one-stop project delivery to our Customers, with the best possible team, and also handle our own pool of designers effectively.