Overview

Consulting Associate Professor Marc Theeuwes spent a year on Stanford campus doing research and developing curriculum for what has become his novel course focused on the intersection of design, mechanical engineering, and entrepreneurship. The intent of the course was to expand Stanford's School of Engineering product realization curriculum with a course that would bridge product concept and market introduction. The outcome of Marc's research brought the course to life and culminated in this book entitled Make it Big: Crossing the Entrepreneur's Gap. After six years of print, the book is now finally available on Amazon. The book has been used for years by entrepreneurs and graduate students that are focused on moving their product ideas from concept to launch. During his research, Professor Theeuwes developed a path with supporting tools for transitioning product ideas into opportunities and into the market. This book is a summary of these processes which are used every year by entrepreneurial design and engineering students with great success and many graduate students have formed companies based on the innovative methodologies in this book. The book uses consumer electronic products as a model for discussion. Deep design review is provided in the major consumer electronics areas such as printed circuit boards, enclosures, displays, and keypads. However, the concepts discussed in this book are broadly applicable to other products and have been used by entrepreneurs focused on a variety of markets including automotive, sporting goods, apparel, medical devices, transportation, clean energy, and toys. The contents of this book strike a balance between conceptual and technical but all focus on the necessary elements for concept formation, innovation, design, and company scaling. There are many differences between starting a physical product company versus an internet or service company. This version of the book is designed to be a physical product guide. The book separates the product and venture formation journey in two phases: starting up and scaling up. Each phase provides a five step approach for navigation, containing design, engineering, and business elements. Concept and product design methodologies are discussed in depth including intellectual property, patenting issues, engineering and production guidelines. Business methodologies such as product distribution, fulfillment, contract manufacturing, venture funding, and entrepreneurial finance are discussed. The purpose of these sections is to provide a set of tools and stepping stones to cross the entrepreneur's gap. There is no way for one book to cover all entrepreneurial topics at expert level detail. That is not the intent of this book. This book provides a map of activities to guide entrepreneurial teams as they create a new product venture. It goes into detail in select areas and introduces others at sufficient level to make progress. Augmented with self directed study and networking, entrepreneurs will find that the steps in this book accelerate product creation and company formation. A series of templates are provided to help entrepreneurs cross the gap. Guides for product design, intellectual property, processes, production, and funding are provided. Soft copies of many tools from this book and many more guides and resources are available on the website www.makeitbig.com. MakeItBig.com is the companion website to this book. This online resource for entrepreneurs and designers provides templates, guides, contracts, and supplementary materials referenced throughout this book for download. Marc acknowledges that this is the beta version of the book. Future versions will be more polished with professional editing; however the concepts will be substantially equivalent. This book is ideally suited to graduate level engineering entrepreneurs.

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