New product development takes money, ingenuity and patience. When the product is built around a new technology—such as light-emitting diodes—money, ingenuity and patience are needed in spades.
"We have learned people really need to play with it and test if for awhile before they believe you," says Daniel Lax, the 31-year-old vice president of business development for a division of his family's plastic injection molding company. In 2008, he branched out from making CD cases and LED pedestrian signals to developing his own brand of bright jobsite LED lamps.