I've spent most of my software career in the Medical Devices industry. One point that stands out to me is when a previous employer released an instrument and Marketing focused on its high quality, only to find out that customers (large hospitals and medical labs) didn't care about quality.
Made no sense: it's a medical instrument. Who doesn't care about quality?
Well, digging deeper, they found that the customers simply assumed that by virtue of being FDA approved, pretty much everything had a similar quality level (pro-tip: no!) so us providing them with White Papers attesting to high quality didn't move the needle on their purchase decisions.
Yeah, there's a bar and often it's much lower than you think it is.
> pretty much everything had a similar quality level (pro-tip: no!)
But presumably they all had adequate quality level. As in they all met strict requirements.
> so us providing them with White Papers attesting to high quality didn't move the needle on their purchase decisions.
This is not that surprising to me. How does quality translate to profit is always the question. Sometimes there is a direct relationship (better quality requires less maintenance, or the number of adverse events is lover) but sometimes it doesn't.
Imagine if you are a company CEO and I come to you proposing that I can supply the same computers your workers already use but with a solid gold case instead of the aluminium one. I could even provide you with white papers saying that the new solid gold cases are much much more resistant to corrosion. And that is true. Gold in that sense is better than aluminium. Higher quality! Would you buy my laptops? Does that sound like a good deal? I don't think you would, unless you have significant laptop case corrosion problems.
> But presumably they all had adequate quality level.
They all do what they claim in the sense that they set forth Safety and Efficacy goals and achieve them. From that perspective all Approved Medical Devices are essentially the same.
But as you say, translating quality to profit isn't obvious. Expressing quality aspects of speed, throughput, reliability, etc. was a clearer benefit to the customer than, e.g., showing that our fluid handling had a Coefficient of Variation of under 5%.
Made no sense: it's a medical instrument. Who doesn't care about quality?
Well, digging deeper, they found that the customers simply assumed that by virtue of being FDA approved, pretty much everything had a similar quality level (pro-tip: no!) so us providing them with White Papers attesting to high quality didn't move the needle on their purchase decisions.
Yeah, there's a bar and often it's much lower than you think it is.