During the development process, identified potential risks can come from a variety of sources. In my experience, most of the risks identified were from our engineering teams working on the project and from previous experiences on past projects. Some risks were identified by mechanical, some by electrical, quality, and so on. During development we would give each other feedback based on the items or changes each team wanted to implement into the product. Sometimes there were no problems, while others something electrical would want to do would causes issues with what mechanical would develop. Vendors have sometimes voiced concerns about our designs and how during manufacturing problems could arise. They have never told us about rival companies because vendors are confidential with their clients and never give out info to other companies. Customers too have come forward and say that based on what we came up with in our design, what kind issues they think will happen. So identifying risks can come a lot of different sources.