Episode 1: A New Resource
- Posted by Chris Justice
- On February 17, 2022
Why the Toolbox?
At Engenious, we help R&D leaders create reliable systems quickly; medical and other high-technology systems. This is what I (Chris) have spent the last 22 years doing, and it’s one of the best jobs in the world, in my opinion. We get to help our clients make the world a better place through technology. It’s a lot of work, but also very satisfying.
We have an upcoming series of articles called the R&D Leader Toolbox. Our goal with this series is to help R&D leaders with their unique needs and address pain points for those of us in the business of creating new technology-based systems.
We see it all; the good, the bad, and the ugly of product design. And we get to learn from some of the best in the industry, seeing and borrowing R&D leadership ideas that improve our craft. We don’t consider ourselves the ultimate authority, but do want to share what we are learning, to help other R&D leaders, like yourself.
So, check out these articles and let me know what you think. What areas deserve more attention, what have you learned as an R&D leader yourself and how can we contribute to the community conversation in ways that help you do your job? This is an invite to email me: chris at engenio dot us.
What to Expect
We are planning to address a range of topics; areas where we have needed a boost ourselves, and areas where we see common challenges for R&D leaders. I expect topics to include People leadership challenges, including the dynamics of working in an Engineering-focused group that collaborates with marketers, production and end users.
The regulatory landscape in our medical device industry is always changing, and we want to help you keep track of those changes and how those affect your R&D activities. Look for us to give you our analysis of what’s happening and how it affects your projects.
Recruiting and retention is in the news lately and has a big impact on R&D leaders. We have attracted a team with top talent and would like to share some of the things that have worked for us. Hopefully they help you too.
Budgeting, and staying on budget, are as old as the most ancient of human endeavors. And we are constantly growing and learning how to manage budget on all sorts of projects; including ones with major technical risks, supply chain challenges and where key project goals involve risks of all types. We are excited to share some of the things we have learned about making a project budget, and managing it along the way.
Managing innovation has always been a tension with the R&D leaders I know. On one hand, organizations say they want innovation, but internal incentives often don’t promote risk-taking. We have seen some ideas put into practice that can help R&D groups see around the corner and provide mechanisms that help innovation happen in small ways, and big ways.
About Engenious
Kansas City metro based, Engenious Design is a creative product development firm specializing in electronic medical device design. Since its founding in 2013, by spouses, Chris and Holly Justice, the Engenious Design team has grown from 2 to 40+ team members. Team expertise includes Electrical, Embedded Software, Mechanical and Test Engineers, Industrial, Interaction, and Graphic Designers, as well as others. Engenious Design capabilities include an on-site electronics lab, quick-turn model shop, and short-run production capabilities with a full medical device quality management system.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Chris has accumulated many lessons-learned from 22 years of medical device design. Chris is principal and co-founder of Engenious Design, a medical device design firm that works with complex electro-mechanical & embedded software systems that are developed from scratch, acquired, and multi-generation products.
