From classroom to showroom : developing a classroom alpha prototype into a marketable product by Ming Leong [and] Geoffrey T. Tsai.

Abstract

What do you get when you take one professor, two instructors, four mentors, seventeen mechanical engineers and $6,500? One coffee table! Well, at least in our case. During the fall of 2008, our team of senior mechanical engineers enrolled in MIT's capstone design course, 2.009 The Product Engineering Process, designed and prototyped a high-end, spiral-folding coffee table named Elika, a product borne out of months of idea generation, brainstorming, market research, machining, testing, troubleshooting, and re-machining. Perhaps our judgment was muddled by the high we got after the final presentation, or maybe we finally realized that we were in fact workaholics, but a group of us decided we couldn't stop working on the table and needed to start a company to bring it to market. This is the story of how we went from a bunch of students trying to fulfill a graduation requirement, to a team of founders of a design company. Along the way, we've learned about patents, business, and manufacturing options; we've explored engineering, industrial, and graphic design; we've anticipated our market niche and how to capture it. But through it all, and despite the set-backs, low points, and YouTube-ing, we've had a blast diving into the unknown to chase after an idea we developed together. We hope this document can be a guide and source of comfort to those who hope to do the same.