‘People playing with stuff’ is DJI’s drone development secret sauce

Ever been curious about the internal workings of drone leader DJI, and how it comes up with its wide array of frequently enhanced products? The company’s head of global policy, Adam Welsh, shared a few details with DroneDJ – including a response to online suspicions that the now routine deluge of leaks on craft under development must be coming straight from CEO Frank Wang himself. (Spoiler alert: They’re not.)

The rapid rate of drone and other tech development, and the company’s success in using those to stake out majority market shares of DJI’s main activities, was explained by Welsh as a combination of factors particular to the company’s launch and evolution.

“Frank Wang, our CEO, was in the right place at the right time with the right kind of enthusiasm,” Welsh explained. “He came out of Hong Kong University Science and Technology with the idea he was going to help consumers build kit drones more readily through flight controller systems that were dependable. But that flight controller became almost like the chassis for an auto maker: Once you perfected that, you were able to build out the platform on top.”

That quickly led to the company’s shift from controller to full-stack drone manufacturing, Welsh said. Wang’s training as an electrical engineer – and desire to create an expanding selection of cool gadgets – led to the multiplication in UAVs created, and increasing sophistication tech added to those. At the time, Welsh says, was like walking into a space occupied by a few flip phones with a bunch of iPhones in your pocket.

“Some tech journalists have credited DJI with creating that category of off-the-shelf drone of that kind of quality – one that was no longer just a toy helicopter,” he says. “It became a product that was dependable, had a solid gimbal that would stabilize the image, and then the camera quality started to come along by leaps and bounds. 

The capabilities of its products, and their relative affordability even as rivals scrambled to come together and create drones of their own, allowed DJI to stake out the dominant market shares it still commands today – albeit in reduced percentages. Revenues from that, and the firm’s rate of product development, became factors shaping how it came to be organized and operated to ensure continuing innovation.

“Just think about how our headquarters are structured,” Welsh said. “It’s two towers, with a bridge between. One whole tower is nothing but R&D and product. Once you’re over there, it’s like a toy maker’s paradise. There are people with kit everywhere, and they’re playing with it. (Wang) put so much effort into making sure he had lots of smart people just playing with stuff in the hallways throughout DJI.”

And that development activity tends to cross-pollinate and generate even more product ideas as it continues.

“I was talking to a guy who worked on the Osmo Pocket team – the hand-held camera,” Welsh recalls of the product’s genesis. “He told me they used to take the drone gimbal and camera assemblies and run up and down the corridors, shaking them around, before they would attach them to drones to see how they stabilized the camera. At one point they looked down at their hand and said, ‘Hey, there’s a product here’.  That’s how the Osmo came about: people just playing with stuff.”

Over the past couple of years, however, increased tech development has generated more leaks about the gear in DJI’s pipelines. That flow has become so habitual and voluminous that some online observers have wondered whether it’s the result of company policy looking to generate user interest and attention ahead of official launches. Might Frank Wang himself be feeding tips to online sleuths, or ordering developers to do so?

No, Welsh replied with remarkable patience. The increased leaks are the result of a several factors, none involving a gossipy Wang.

For example, the recently launched Dock 2 and Flycart were first introduced in China, after being developed and introduced with Chinese industrial, enterprise, and first responder clients. Because of that, Welsh said, reported sightings by Chinese media, as well as rollout coverage, meant those made it into the national press, which leakers around the globe could pick up on. “People know how to use Google Translate,” Welsh noted.

Meanwhile, sources outside DJI’s direct sphere have been growing looser of lip recently – or mistakenly posting product information too early – in growing numbers.

“Our resellers, or other individuals who get advance copies of our products, are continually leaking,” he said. “We have chats internally about ‘Where did that image come from,’ and ‘Oh my gosh, I think I recognize that person’s nail polish – I think I know who it is!’ It’s almost like a detective investigation to figure out who did the leak. 

“But it’s not a strategy,” Welsh continued. “The fact that people are so keen to learn about our products is a great sign, and we shouldn’t be too depressed about people obsessing over the look of a new DJI product. But we are not strategically leaking – that’s not our thing.”

What is, is creating and rapidly producing new drones and other tech products – several of which DJI looks set to be releasing soon (probably amid ample leaks beforehand).

“I think we’re going to have a pretty exciting year for consumer stuff,” Welsh said. “There’s a lot of really fun stuff we’re going to be launching in the relatively near-term. But I can’t get into specifics or I’d be guilty of leaking, which as we know is one of our cardinal sins.”