Excerpt
2024, Paper: "A prototype is a product or service’s early sample, model, or release. It is built to test a concept or process and serves as a tangible representation of an idea. Some prototypes are primarily commercial, while others are scientific. The advent of digitization has significantly revolutionized the prototyping process over several decades in both commercial and scientific spheres. This aspect of the digital transformation has lowered the costs of finding errors, sped up the iteration and addition of new features into prototypes, improved accuracy and precision, and enhanced the integration of prototyping with other activities, such as manufacturing. Despite the progress, confusion persists about the characteristics that distinguish commercial prototypes from their scientific counterparts. That confusion grows when a firm resides in a setting where both types of prototyping occur, such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) or disease detection from medical images. Let’s dig deeper to understand why changing economic conditions have blurred some lines."