As always, it depends 🙂 It depends where and why your product is innovating in your market.
Maybe your product is based on a revolutionary idea, one of those “why didn’t I think of that” moments, but the execution is relatively simple. In that case, you probably don’t need to own and control much of the design record. Most of your product’s value is in your vision and marketing, so a functional description and maybe component designs are all you really need, and you can leave the finer details up to whatever manufacturing partner you’re working with currently.
However, if your product is highly technical or complex, then your approach should be much different. If it takes a lot of learning or training to be able to produce your product, then we probably want to own most if not all of the design record.
Here are a couple good questions to ask yourself as you decide what’s worth owning yourself:Will it be hard/expensive to reproduce this piece of the design record?
If this piece of the design record disappeared tomorrow, would it impact my business in a significant way?
If you answered yes to one of those, you should probably consider keeping that work “in house”. If you answered yes to both, then you definitely should!
Don’t give up the keys to your product!
-Brian Schoolcraft