The impact of prototyping strategies on crowdfunding success

Abstract

Innovative design and technology startups often struggle to gain market success when launching a new product. Research in business management highlights the impact of strategic marketing to foster launch success. Prototyping plays a critical role in demonstrating the potential of the said new technologies and innovations into the market. Prototypes can engage users or highlight the potential of an opportunity to investors. The design performance impact of prototyping strategies has been evaluated in recent studies. This work explores the impact that strategic prototyping (defined here as the use of techniques such as: Subsystem isolation, or scale modeling), has on market outcome. Pilot analysis of two hundred launch campaigns on the marketing and sales platform- Kickstarter.com, is conducted. This database provides clear documentation of the information that is provided to said investors or 'backers', and resulting funds received. The relative usage frequency of various strategies is reported from a subset of product launch efforts after which the correlations between the demonstration of the strategies and funding received is calculated. These preliminary observations may support designers in managing project resources while developing prototypes to launch new products.