Leading When Failure is Expensive: High-Stakes Decision Making in Hardware A Joint ELC Kitchener-Waterloo & Hard Tech KW Roundtable hosted by Builders Club

When your wrong call means scrapping physical prototypes, retooling manufacturing, or starting certification from scratch, leadership decisions carry a weight that's distinctly different from software. This is an opportunity to network with both engineering leaders and hardware professionals in Kitchener-Waterloo as we tackle the unique challenges of leading when failure is expensive to reverse.

This special crossover event brings together ELC's engineering leadership community with Hard Tech KW's hardware expertise to focus on leadership themes specific to the hardware world. We're creating a space where leaders who understand the realities of physical constraints, long lead times, and costly reversals can share what they've learned.

This is a roundtable format where local leaders share what they've learned in the trenches. We'll discuss our topic themes and then roundtable a challenge from each person, so come prepared with a specific high-stakes decision or challenge you're facing right now that you'd like help solving.

Discussion topics will include:

1. De-risking and Prototyping: When do you invest in expensive prototypes vs. move forward with uncertainty?
2. Product Design Tradeoffs: Leading decisions around increased BOM for flexibility vs. low cost but locked-in design
3. "Never Been Done" vs. "Proven Possible": How leadership strategies differ between technological risk and execution risk
4. Strategic Testing Investment: When and how much to invest in testing before committing to production

Come join this unique collaboration between two fantastic local communities who can offer practical insights from both leadership and technical hardware perspectives.

Organized by: ELC Kitchener-Waterloo & KW Hard Tech