Affiliation:
1. Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology, Pakistan
2. Thuongmai University, Vietnam
3. University of South-Eastern Norway, Norway
Abstract
Hardware startups are increasingly popular due to recent advancements in hardware technologies. Nowadays, hardware product development involves the process innovation not only at the hardware level but also at software components. The scarcity of knowledge on hardware startup product development motivates the authors to carry out an empirical investigation on five hardware startup companies. They found some common good practices among hardware startups (i.e., process definition, evolutionary development process, and document management). They reveal several factors that are different from software startups, such as low priority of product quality, product pipeline, and unrecognized product platform. They proposed an integrative process model of hardware product development that shows the connections between human factors in the startups, their speed-prioritized development processes, and the consequence of hindered productivity in the later phases. The model has some implications for hardware startup founders to plan for the trade-off between team, speed, quality, and later productivity.