Stages of the Product Release
Stages
- Concept. Formulating the requirements and value proposition.
- Prototype. Typically, several prototypes are required, and should be done with rapid prototyping iterations.
- Pre-alpha - feature incomplete prototype.
- Alpha - feature complete. Intended for in-house use.
- Beta - feature complete. Feature freeze.
- Product Release Candidate - released for consumption by outside users. Candidate for Neo-Commercialization, Distributive Enterprise creation, or Pilot Projects. These users are expected to contribute user feedback and improvement.
- Pilot - Specific case of Product Release, but involving a focused effort with a third party stakeholder in a collaborative development relationship. Release in economically significant situation intended for replicabiity. Significant development work will be required to attain replicability. OSE is soliciting pilot projects with collaborators who are interested in early adoption, with the expectation that they will contribute to development. Otherwise, we also consider it a pilot project when an independent replicator uses are machines for economically-significant purposes, such as production or infrastructure-building. In this case, for example the France CEB Replication and the Tractor Replication in Peru, and the Tractor Replication in Canada may be considered indepenedent pilot projects. Independent means that OSE was not involved, outside of providing the open source blueprints.
- Production engineering. This phase revolves around the creation of Distributive Enterprise. This is a significant step for transitioning from project to product. This revolves around deploying optimized production for a Distributive Enterprise business model, including Distributed Quality Control, backed by Open Source Production Engineering. This phase revolves around developing methods of distributed production, and incentive challenges can be used here for additional energy. Sourcing optimization is also required at this stage to avoid any issues related to supply chains, such as disruptions by COVID.
- Franchise/license/white label Development. Once the production engineering is done, OSE can license others for OSE Certified production. People can produce independently without paying any royalties by producing under their own brand. At this stage, the product becomes a Distributive Enterprise Release Candidate.
- Stable Enterprise. Distributive Enterprise around the product is proven, and economic traction is beginning. OSE is in a position to grow its operations with bootstrap revenue based on the product.
- Distributed Market Substitution - Last mile documentation and improvement work of attaining Viral Replicability Criteria for widespread technological diffusion and leapfrogging, accompanied by development of Technological Recursion. End outcome is Distributed Market Substitution, which OSE postulates is the natural evolution of a product's economic lifecycle in an advanced civilization.
3D Printer, Seed Eco-Home, and other Product Releases
Last Updated Sep, 2022
The 3D Printer (see 3D Printer Genealogy) is OSE's first official product release at the Distributive Enterprise level. The Distributive Enterprise level is the highest level of product release, where OSE is building capacity to distribute the enterprise to independents as well as licensees.
It should be noted that 'product release' at the Production Engineering (Stage 8) is not the same as 'enterprise release'. Stage 8 marks the point of optimization intended for creating a robust business model. A robust business model in the OSE sense starts with robust production engineering - efficient and effective production, using easy-to-source or easy to make parts. Once we master the production aspects - to the point of replicable, distributed, small-scale manufacturing being demonstrated at other locations - then we are ready for scaling the enterprise aspect. Scaling occurs as collaborating or independent enterprises start production in different areas of the world. A proven 'Enterprise release' occurs when at least one other enterprise is producing the product successfully - which means that we have proven that the enterprise itself is replicable.
Collaborating enterprises continue to develop the product and enterprise levels at Stage 9 - paving the way for widespread enterprise replication and traction. Stage 10 - a stable enterprise - indicates that any new participant can engage - and use the enterprise as a means to bootstrap further Open Source Product Development (OSPD) towards creating the Open Source Economy. OSE assumes that the culmination and last phase of any successful OSPD effort is Distributed Market Substition - which is the natural outcome of any truly open and collaborative economic development process. This by no means implies monopolization - as some may assume when we say that a 'single product dominates the market'. That is not the case for the results from OSE's work. This is because (1) the economic results are distributive, where OSE favors replication; and (2) OSE's Module-Based Design and Construction Set Approach facilitates the creation of all types of derivative products or spinoffs. Thus, the end result is the creation of business models that do not rely on Artificial Scarcity, which is quite the opposite of monopolies.
The State of Completion infographic shows that 4 machines are in a state of product release (step 6) according to Stages of Product Release. Of these 4, the 3D printer is the only product actively being developed at the 7th step - the Distributive Enterprise Development step.
OSE Specifications apply to both the product level, and the enterprise level - and are a rigorous requirement that requires thousands of hours of development time to achieve. We estimate that the amount of effort required for any product release takes a typical startup team and budget (6-12 developers full time for one year) and about a million dollar budget. This applies to small (3D printer) and large (house) products, where most of the cost is developer time.
