Entrepreneurial designers are creating new ideas for wearable and connected devices daily. Consumers are racing to support their Kickstarter campaigns. Unfortunately, many brilliant ideas are killed when it’s time to move from prototype to full-scale manufacturing.

There's no question that these markets hold great promise. For example, ABI Research predicted that 455 million wearable devices will be sold by 2019, generating US$46.5 billion of revenue worldwide. Healthcare devices will account for the largest chunk of the pie, with 121 million smart watches accounting for US$21 billion in sales, the research firm said.

"The barriers to entry are low in the wearables market, because the parts exist," Robert Thompson, director of consumer business development for microcontrollers at Freescale Semiconductor, said. But many great ideas founder as part procurement starts.

At the same time, the crowdfunding community is pushing back on designers to make sure they've considered manufacturing and procurement issues. "One of the major challenges that crowdfunding sites have run into is that a product idea will go on the site, get funded, and then run into problems with manufacturing," said Sam Wurzel, CEO and co-founder of the online parts sourcing company Octopart. "Today, these crowdsourcing companies are highly incentivized to maximize the number of campaigns that are successful."