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70 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2024 Since at least the 1970s, there has been a somewhat fungible mantra in electronics product development that has included two or more of the following descriptive adjectives: smaller, faster, lighter, better, and cheaper (oen coupled with more rugged and reliable). Getting all of them simultaneously was not always possible, but if you paid enough, you could probably achieve it. However, it gener- ally required the purchaser to give in to some commonly held "rules of the road" set down by the manufacturing community. When navigat- ing the design process, what happens when the manufacturers want you to follow a road that What Matters When Designing Next-generation Products does not take you where you want to go, or when standard practices are too constraining? You can certainly decide to leave the path to gain benefits, but you should be aware of the risks and dangers that lie on the road less trav- eled. Robert Frost's timeless poem about that road le the reader with the impression that the results of choice were good—or not if you couldn't see the full length of the road ahead. With that in mind (and current knowledge), let's try to create a roadmap of sorts to see what might be done to make sure we reach our desired destination in a constantly changing design and manufacturing environment. Full Flexible Thinking Feature Column by Joe Fjelstad, VERDANT ELECTRONICS