Hardware Needs Digital Augmentation, Now

While traditional hardware processes rely on systems engineering to master physical constraints and technical tradeoffs, that discipline often sits at a distance from the industry’s deeper “why”: what users truly need and want, and how those expectations shift once products ship and competitors respond. With hardware, the product manager’s pivotal role is to harness emerging digital capabilities to keep finding (and refining) that elusive emotional and practical sweet spot in the target audience’s hearts and minds, not just at launch but continuously over time. With this shift, product leaders need to acquire additional capabilities, and a new mindset.

It is 2001. A multinational customer is based in Hong Kong, with its R&D center in Tel Aviv and manufacturing in a part of Shenzhen developing so fast that my local guide could not find his way, even though he had lived in Hong Kong – just 50 km away – for ten years by that time.

Software was the means by which industrial design and mechanical engineering, my core services at the time, could be delivered across continents and across borders. Enclosure 3D forms were created and captured using software, which also enabled the transfer of CAD models and drawings. Voice over IP, another software product, drove the cost of voice communication close to zero, making frequent consultations with remote engineering and manufacturing teams suddenly practical.