Unlocking Creativity: How Engineers Foster Innovation in Product Development
Engineers are often our greatest overlooked source of product innovation. The primary reason for this is that engineers often have a lack of visibility in most organizations because they often work behind the scenes, focusing on the technical aspects of the technology that powers our businesses. They are mistakenly associated with technology and often not innovation or creativity. In this article, we’re going to explore key ways you can work with your engineering team to breathe new life and innovation into the technologies products, and services that are core to your business.
Engineers Want To Innovate, So Let Them!
The best engineers get their kicks off of emerging technology and are always looking for ways to incorporate it into their projects. It’s not uncommon for an engineer to want to take on a new project simply because it allows them to learn some new tech stack. Today this might include things such as AI, machine learning, and ChatGPT. We must empower our engineers to stay up to date with the latest advancements in their field and identify emerging technologies that can be integrated into products for enhanced performance or new features.
Continuous Improvement
If you’re an engineer and you’re not continuously growing your skillset you’ll often find you’re left behind by your peers in only a couple of years. This is why engineers are masters at continuous improvement as it’s vital to their survival in the marketplace. This makes your engineer's prime candidates for identifying areas for continuous improvement in your products and services. Too often companies achieve some moderate level of success and the priority shifts from innovation to growing market share. By including your engineers in developing your product roadmap you’ll ensure continuous improvement is the norm, rather than a reaction to the competition.
Prototyping
A prototype is a draft version of a product that allows you to explore your ideas and show the intention behind a feature or the overall design concept to users before investing time and money into development according to usability.gov. Creating prototypes allows engineers to test and refine product ideas, ensuring they are functional, practical, and aligned with customer expectations before investing huge amounts of resources in expensive development. Many engineers will jump at the opportunity to create a prototype because they are continuous learners and always looking for opportunities to use new technologies, especially while getting paid to learn. Prototyping is also key to the MVP (minimum viable product) which allows you to gather customer feedback early and iterate often while minimizing the risk of overextending in a direction inconsistent with your customer’s needs.
Exposing Engineers to Customers
Engineers are trained to excel in technical problem-solving, but they may face challenges in effectively communicating their innovative ideas to non-technical stakeholders. Engineers also may have limited exposure to customers and it can be unclear to them how their innovations directly impact the end-user. Allowing engineers to directly interact with customers allows them the opportunity to form a direct connection and get emotionally involved in solving a technical problem. I remember a time when I was overseeing the development of a mobile app for a client and the product was still in a friends and family round of investing. One of the investors was the mother of my client and she jumped on the call to see how the project was coming along. After the call, I was overwhelmed with the sense that we had to make this project a huge success to make Mom proud, and it led to a much higher-than-usual personal investment in the project.
Sustainable Design
Engineers can contribute to product innovation by incorporating eco-friendly and sustainable design principles, aiming for energy efficiency, recyclability, and reduced environmental impact. They can research and choose materials with lower environmental impact, such as recyclable or biodegradable materials, to reduce waste and promote sustainability. Engineers can design energy-efficient products, optimizing energy consumption and reducing greenhouse gas emissions during manufacturing, use, and disposal. They can incorporate renewable energy sources to reduce an overreliance on fossil fuels.
Conclusion
Engineering is often a misunderstood role as the general public often associates them with being entirely technology-focused and not associating with innovation or creativity. If you’re not currently including your engineers in crafting your product vision you’re overlooking your greatest source of product innovation. But what if you don’t have an in-house engineering team to incorporate because product creation is outsourced? A fractional CTO can fill this gap due to their strong engineering background and experience shipping products. Either way, it’s time to start innovating and getting the right people in the room.
