Product Development in Other Industries

One of the best examples of thorough product development is the ubiquitous Swiss Army Knife. While early examples of this versatile tool were used by the Swiss Armed forces, Victorinox had a vision of the future. Talk to anyone who has owned one of their earlier models and you will see that – the path of product development has been quite extraordinary. At Burnett Thorne we are impressed with Victorinox’s ability to keep the technical quality in the product while moving at such a pace.

Every Swiss Army Knife works well, they never seem to tarnish and new models are emerging every year. We are not sure if Victorinox have produced a lemon with their new “Flash – card” memory in a Swiss Army Knife. While a memory stick is now a standard item for carrying data, we are not sure how to navigate through airport security with the knife as part of the item.

“An idea is salvation by imagination”

Albert Einstein, former neighbour of my friends grandparents

At the other end of the product development scale we have Malcolm Bricklin’s endeavour with the sports car, which carried his name and a similar endeavour with De Lorean and his all aluminium sportster. We include the AMC Pacer into this category of interesting cars, each of which was long on ideas, but poorly executed with a lack of consumer driven product development.