Many companies formulate product strategies, routinely choose among new product concepts, and plan new product development projects. Yet, when asked where the greatest weakness in product innovation is, the managers at these companies indicate the fuzzy front end.1 They recite some familiar symptoms of front-end failure:
- New products are abruptly canceled in midstream because they don’t “match the company strategy.”
- “Top priority” new product projects suffer because key people are “too busy” to spend the required time on them.
- New products are frequently introduced later than announced because the product concept has become a moving target.
Times have changed since 1983 when Donald Schön described product development as a “game” in which “general managers distance themselves from the uncertainties inherent in product development and . . . technical personnel protect themselves against the loss of corporate commitment.”2 Since then, new product development has become a core business activity that needs to be closely tied to the business strategy and a process that must be managed through analysis and decision making.3 Now, general managers cannot distance themselves from the uncertainties of product development, nor can technical personnel protect themselves against corporate commitment.
As enhanced capabilities for concurrent engineering, rapid prototyping, and smoothly functioning supplier partnerships have helped reduce product design and development times, management attention has begun to shift to the... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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