Why am I writing a blog?

I recently took a break from writing during the final stages of selling my company. I used this time to reflect on who I want to become and how a blog would fit into my personal goals. I came away with some renewed passion and more precise intentions and goals!

I originally started this blog as a way to share my knowledge and to get discovered by potential customers who might want to work with my company, Gray Optics. I am interested to help others by sharing my knowledge and experience from 15+ years of working in optics and new product development.

I'm writing this blog as a way to give back, help others, explore ideas, and progress my personal mission:

Get more breakthrough technologies developed and on the market

Can you believe that More than 60% of new products in development fail to even make it to product launch?

Things I believe to be true

• Too many product development teams fail to launch successful products

• Too many new product development initiatives fail or are canceled due to a lack of progress as seen by management or investors

I think there needs to be a different outcome.

New product development is hard, especially in optics.

I don't think enough people are talking about new product development, how hard it is, and what the best practices are.

We hear a lot about the success stories, the small fraction of efforts that actually made it to market, and those that succeeded in taking a sizable market share.

However, what about all the rest? How can we turn the stories of failure to launch, into valuable lessons learned that everyone can benefit from?