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I tend to agree with this advice, but OXO (maker of well-designed houseware products) is a famous counter-example. Not only do they outsource manufacturing (as
by jsdalton 14y ago
I tend to agree with this advice, but OXO (maker of well-designed houseware products) is a famous counter-example. Not only do they outsource manufacturing (as nearly every product company does these days), but they also outsource product design, which is absolutely their core competency.
I've never understood how they made that work, but obviously it is a strategy that has worked well for them.
- bwertz 14y agoInteresting example - sounds really strange that they outsource their product design
- rhizome 14y agoJudging from the OXO magnets and paperclip holders I've bought, it's not serving them well.
- samstave 14y agoBut OXO products are not complex product. The majority of their products are injection molded plastic. So, maybe their core is not product design at all - maybe their core is product concept and product selection. They choose a product type they want, develop the initial concept far enough along to pass it off to the industrial designer who models it - then its contracted out to low-bid/low-cost (presumabley previously used) plastic fab in china. Seems like a really good model when you have very simple, typically single-digit-materials, products.
- wglb 14y agoOr is their core business marketing? An example: Borland marketed Pascal and later C compilers. (Ok, sorry--from the deep dark past.) They outsourced both pieces of technology. So you might think that this is an example of outsourcing core competency. But their core competency was Marketing--Phillipe Kahn, during that period had glow-in-the-dark PR. (Incidentally, the technological genius behind both products was none other than Anders Hejlsberg.)
- mmagin 14y agoMarketing. A lot of their recent stuff is cheap crap, IMHO.
- rhizome 14y agoAbsolutely. They are coasting on a couple of awards they received 10 years ago.