выжимка:
"Pilots are about trying the innovation for real and making sure that everything works. They are about preparing to scale up to production.
However, a pilot is not a technology experiment to see if people will “like” the service.
A pilot is not a proof point that whatever-it-is can be made to work in the first place.
Neither is it a sales tool used to help win funding.

These are the roles of a prototype, which is a small demonstration of the doability of a new innovation.
Prototypes are good for resolving technical and political ambiguity. They are small, hardly functional, demonstrations of what something could look like if it were built. Or they are experiments that show that the process or technology involved can work in this new, novel way.
And, of course, they are entirely throw-away, since they don’t do anything very useful, other than illustrate one, specific point.

The mistake some innovators make when they confuse a pilot and a prototype is they commit significant resources to building something for real before they have achieved agreement that whatever-it-is will go ahead."

в целом промышленный / макетный / опытный / экспериментальный образцы – это разные вещи.

не все из них entirely throw-away

по теме:

1. важно понимать, что в разных -индустриях- отраслях (да и вообще в разных контекстах) это несколько по-разному. например на ПО куски этого текста никак не распространяются. вот это например -- "of course, they are entirely throw-away".

2. да и терминологию эту на практике каждый выгибает как хочет. вот это например зависит от структуры взаимоотношений - кто делает и для кого это делается: "A pilot is not a proof point that whatever-it-is can be made to work in the first place. Neither is it a sales tool used to help win funding."