Product development of your flagship product is nearly complete. Factories have been ramped up to begin the first production runs, orders have been placed with 3rd party suppliers, marketing efforts are underway, and negotiations are taking place with channel partners. Then you receive word. A critical problem has been discovered that will prevent the product from going on sale until the defect is addressed.

Suddenly everything is in the air. The launch schedule is in jeopardy which may effect this quarter's revenues, the factories will sit idle as they are re-tooled to address the defect, and key channel partners are left in a state of uncertainty.

Sound familiar? It should.

When a person receives a notice in the mail from an automotive manufacturer asking to bring their car in for a recall, when people are asked to install a "patch" two weeks after they bought some software, or when someone searches the Internet on some problem their cell phone has and find hundreds of people are complaining about the exact same problem, these are quality control issues that cost the responsible companies millions of dollars to address.

Often engineers, designers, sales people, and customer support representatives have an idea where the quality problems will likely be in a new product, for example a weak point in a design or a problem with a 3rd party supplier. But because of the politically driven and hierarchical culture of big businesses, standing up to say there is a problem is a high risk proposition. Instead, the product development process marches on and companies sell products with known defects.

Using Inkling Markets, you can augment your testing methodology and understand the likelihood of quality problems in each facet of your product's design; addressing issues earlier in the development process before they become game changers, hopefully preventing costly recalls, product defects, and interruptions to production.

In fact, using Inkling Markets, not only can people express themselves anonymously by trading, they can create their own markets throughout the development process, creating a web of questions asking about every facet of potential quality control problems.