Cambridge Consultants Blog

8 reasons for a career in product development

Last week Cambridge Consultants played host to a group of very bright engineering students from Ecole Centrale Paris, wanting to find out more about life in a leading product development company.  As the group was leaving, the lecturer in charge, Steve, made a comment that made me stop and think.  “I can completely understand why ...

Medical implant vulnerability is not fundamental

A number of recent reports have highlighted the potential vulnerability of medical implants to hacker attack.

It is undoubtedly possible to produce radio linked devices for many applications that are vulnerable to attack and vulnerability tends to increase for battery powered devices because some cryptographic and authentication functions use significant energy.

Can good product development save lives?

I know.  Most people don’t normally think about product developers as life savers.  But here’s the thing.  I recently found out that the majority of people don’t get the therapeutic benefit they are supposed to get from their inhaler if they suffer from the increasingly common condition of asthma. Studies show that, whilst the concept ...

Where should we be drawing the line on privacy and security?

Where should be drawing the line in innovation between valuable services and data privacy? Google has created a stir by changing its privacy rules and there are allegations that the new rules breach EU privacy rules.

When is a consumer not a consumer? When they’re a patient.

One of the advantages of working for a leading product development company, is that we operate across a range of markets. And this breadth leads to some very interesting observations. Two of the big markets in which we operate are medical technology and consumer products.  And yet the language used by both markets couldn’t be ...

Innovating 5,000 years of tradition

According to a recent CNN article, our obsession with tea has been around for nearly five thousand years, so what can a product development company from Cambridge possibly innovate here?   Well, it’s all about watching consumer trends. Look at the past decade and you’d be hard pushed not to have noticed the arrival of the ...

Value in the Public Sector

I mentioned in my blog on major IT projects like smart metering some of the problems governments are having in getting the right balance between using commercial technology strands enjoying large private sector investment and building on those, versus be-spoke innovative product development and the dead ends these sometimes reach. Building on this point, I noticed that the folk at Software Advice have been talking about the related issue of adoption of cloud based services by the public sector.

A Happier and Healthier New Year?

With the Season’s festivities now over, many people turn their thoughts to creating – and trying to stick to – a whole series of New Year resolutions… many of which are normally based around creating a happier and healthier year ahead.  Drink less, stop smoking, eat better and exercise regularly must be amongst the most ...

Why do big Government Innovative Product Development often go wrong and what should we expect from the SMART Metering roll out?

There’s a long history of cost overruns, delays and problems in major government procurement whether it be a radio for the military (see Delivering Digital Tactical Communications Through the Bowman CIP Programme … By Great Britain: National Audit Office) or an IT system for the NHS that had to be scrapped after £12bn of costs had been incurred. In fact, it’s almost an oxymoron to talk about government innovative development in the UK, so commonly are these programmes delayed, cancelled or don’t deliver the promised benefits.

Convenience, vulnerabilty and upgradeability in innovative product development

A growing theme in innovative product developments of the last decade is exploiting the benefits of connection. The public has shown time and again that it values the convenience of connection very highly. But there is a sometimes implicit trade-off. For instance, the rise of internet banking has been a gold mine for organised crime. The ...