Little Company. Big Company. Go, New Products. Go!

Spark new product development by forming business partnerships between large and small companies. That's the message John Volpe, a founder of Incucomm, delivered last week during a product development presentation.

A large company, for example, could benefit from the R&D efforts of a smaller, faster company. While a small company could profit from the larger's markets and credit rating.

With some partners, however, you might find yourself balanced precariously on a knife edge of product development.

John shared a story from his days at Texas Instruments (TI) to illustrate the opportunities and risks associated with small-large pairings.

TI had formed a partnership with a small company (Small Company) located in California. TI coveted Small Company's R&D -- it would save TI $900K for this project. Small Company had the ability to deliver the project; however, they didn’t build the components to spec -- military specs were needed. Small Company asks for an additional $40K to finish the project. John considers suing Small Company, an action that would force it out of business. Instead, he flies to California and negotiates an agreement.

After his story, John listed some of the differences between large and small companies:

Time

Calendars vs watches

Consensus - who votes

Structure vs chaos

Assets

Little guy - his company

Big guy - just a job

Cash Flow

Little guy - slow payments can kill him.

Big guy - doesn’t understand the impact of slow payments to a small company. He blames the process.

Intellectual Property

A big company’s IP process can be unreasonable.

To me, these differences showcase the benefits of a powerful design concept -- parallel structures. If your organization's structure doesn't match your partner's, it becomes more important to monitor the project and make sure it's on track.

Then again, you could always talk about new partners with your Golden Retriever.