The next decade of hardware innovation won’t be defined by any single product – it will be shaped by how those products are built. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Duro Labs founder Michael Corr shared his vision for transforming hardware development into a process as streamlined as modern software development.
The End of Manual Data Management
The current state of hardware development is held back by fragmented data and manual processes. “Basically because of the inefficiencies of these software tools, it required a whole secondary labor force just to manage those inefficiencies,” Michael explains. “So, are there even a formal job titles of peoples whose responsibilities are to move the data from one team to the other and make sure it transferred properly?”
The GitHub Model for Hardware
Duro’s vision draws inspiration from software development’s evolution. “The technology is much more mature and commoditized to be able to centralize the data in the same way that GitHub is centralizing software source code,” Michael notes. This centralization is more than a convenience – it’s the foundation for transforming how hardware products are developed.
A Cultural Shift Enabling Change
The timing for this transformation is critical. “Now there’s a new generation of engineers who fundamentally understand that model. It’s not foreign to them. And so they’re not only embracing it, but they’re demanding it,” Michael observes. This generational shift is creating the perfect conditions for reimagining hardware development workflows.
The One-Hour Setup Dream
Michael’s ultimate vision is remarkably specific: “A software developer, even a mid level developer, they can set up their entire tool chain in an hour. They can set up their development environment, their GitHub, repo, Amazon web server, build server, what have you. All those tools were designed to be interoperable and work out of the box.”
He wants the same for hardware: “What I’m looking forward to is the day that you can do the same thing in the hardware space.” This isn’t just about convenience – it’s about removing the barriers that currently prevent rapid innovation in hardware.
Beyond PLM
While Duro currently operates in the PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) space, their vision extends far beyond it. “Durable has been super focused on becoming the best PLM in the market today. But from there are so many different ways we can go. We can go into the production side, we can go into the toy management side and go into other areas,” Michael explains.
The goal isn’t just to be another tool in the stack – it’s to become the central nervous system for hardware development: “Because we are more of a platform, it can all be one ecosystem in and of itself. Always referring to that single source of truth.”
Why This Matters
The implications of this vision extend far beyond making engineers’ lives easier. As Michael explains, when hardware development becomes more accessible and efficient, “What’s going to happen in the same way it did in the software space is hardware companies are finally going to be able to innovate. They can be able to take risks because those costs to fail, those penalties of making mistakes are going to come down significantly enough that it’s going to encourage people to try new things.”
This reduction in the cost of innovation could trigger a renaissance in hardware development, similar to what we’ve seen in software over the past decades. By making hardware development more accessible and reducing the penalties for experimentation, Duro aims to unlock a new wave of physical innovation.
The true measure of success for this vision? Michael puts it simply: “What I’m looking forward to is the day that a hardware team is stood up and the very first thing they do is install their Dura account.” When that becomes the norm rather than the exception, we’ll know that hardware development has finally had its software moment.