The tools we use determine the results we can achieve. If your only tool is a hammer, then everything you produce will be made with nails, which is fine if you are building houses, but not so good if you are in the automobile business or even the toy invention business.
Our tools give us capabilities and limitations.
Years ago we acquired several technologies that revolutionized our business and what we were capable of creating. As a cavemen at heart, a troglodyte really, in the early days we (metaphorically speaking) carved everything we made out of plastic with an exacto knife. Not literally of course, but we made primitive concepts with primitive tools. We used existing motorized gearboxes torn from existing toys and we used existing electronics scavenged from whatever we could find (Yak Baks mostly).
I spent countless hours in thrift shops hunting for old toys for reference and to be ‘parted out’ to make new toys. Then one day we decided to hire an electronics 'expert' so that we could begin to create products with electronic features of our own design, rather than be limited to using parts designed by others. I can’t say we were always early technology adopters, but hey, we’re getting better every day - or trying to.
