This post was authored by Brett Hileman, the founder of Prodo, a physical product development firm and a new AZTC member.

I have a task for you, over the next 10 minutes count how many physical and digital products you directly contact and interact with. Example being I used a keyboard, one point for physical, or I sent a text message, one point for digital. My results: 24 physical and 3 digital, so just over the past 10 minutes I become 8X more experienced in physical product use than digital.  With that ratio in mind it is no surprise that people are constantly thinking of ways to improve or reinvent physical products, yet the Arizona startup scene is primarily digital innovations. Why is that? I think the answer is simple, general perception is that the app is cheaper to develop than the electronics the app runs on, which was probably always the case up until recently.

Over the past 10-20 years physical product development has been lurking in the shadow of digital product development, learning the ways of lean rapid development. It is now possible to follow a one week sprint schedule developing a physical product and get to a minimum viable product without even starting a conversation with a manufacturer. Utilizing tools like 3D printers, Arduino microcontrollers, and open source software you can create a prototype within a couple hours of drawing it up. What that means is you can validate and iterate over the span of a single day, and have a refined and validated product within a couple weeks. Making this a true revolution in how we approach developing physical consumer products. Prodo Innovations helps Arizona inventors use these tools and process to take an idea that has been rusting in a garage for years and get it to the store shelves within a couple months.

Ready to start inventing? Email Brett Hileman at bhileman@prodoit.co to get started.