Longitudinal Study of Learning Outcomes in a New Product Development Class

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corie L. Cobb ◽  
Alice M. Agogino ◽  
Sara L. Beckman
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Product Development ◽  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Work Experience ◽  
New Product ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Team Work ◽  
User Needs ◽  
Concept Generation

This paper reports on a longitudinal study of lessons learned from a graduate-level New Product Development course taught at the University of California at Berkeley, comparing lessons learned by students during the course with alumni perceptions one to ten years after graduation. Previous research on student learning outcomes in New Product Development (NPD) found that on the last day of class students identify working in multifunctional teams and understanding user needs as their most important lessons learned. This study raises the question of whether or not students maintain the same emphasis on learning outcomes once they have moved on to careers in industry. To answer this question, we conducted 21 in-depth interviews with alumni who took the course between 1995–2005 and are now working in industry. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of the alumni interviews reveals that former students still highly value what they learned about team work and understanding user needs, but see more value in tools for concept generation, prototyping, and testing after gaining work experience. The results reaffirm the value of engaging students in multidisciplinary design projects as a vehicle for developing the professional skills needed in today’s competitive new product development environment.

Adaptive Text Extraction for New Product Development

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Y. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Quality Function Deployment ◽  
New Product ◽  
User Needs ◽  
Product Reviews ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Product Attributes ◽  
Traditional Methods ◽  
Text Extraction

The first step in product design and development involves concept generation. Concept generation involves identifying customer needs and then mapping those needs onto a set of product attributes (specifications). Traditional methods for concept generation involve focus groups, surveys, and anthropological studies to assess user needs. Techniques, like Quality Function Deployment (QFD), then guide designers in relating needs to explicit product specifications. In this paper, we propose to augment traditional methods for concept generation by automatically processing user generated online product reviews. We apply adaptive text extraction methods to automatically learn user needs and product attributes. Association rule mining is used to learn the mapping between needs and attributes. We summarize results from prior work for independently learning user needs and attribute specifications from product reviews and then discuss the application of these methods to concept generation for new product development.

Self-Reflection: Lessons Learned in a New Product Development Class

2007 ◽  
Vol 129 (7) ◽  
pp. 668-676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hey ◽  
Alan Van Pelt ◽  
Alice Agogino ◽  
Sara Beckman
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
New Product ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
User Needs ◽  
Multidisciplinary Teams ◽  
User Research ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Academic Settings

New product development (NPD) classes based around problem-based learning and mediated by design coaches from industry provide an effective vehicle for authentic learning and realistic design experiences within the constraints of academic settings. Little is known, however, about what students actually learn in these courses or whether the learning corresponds to what is required by industry. To address these questions, we: (1) analyzed data from a structured “lessons learned,” or self-reflection, exercise performed by NPD students in a graduate, multidisciplinary NPD class at the University of California, Berkeley each year for the past 6 years; and (2) conducted interviews with our industrial partners who coached the students’ projects. We present an analysis of over 2300 lessons learned and compare the students’ views with the reflections of the industry coaches. In the lessons learned analysis, students highlighted skills for working in multidisciplinary teams as their most important learning experience, and secondarily, within lessons about the NPD process itself, identified the gathering and analysis of customer and user needs. Students commonly referenced skills that are not part of a traditional engineering design curriculum: listening, observation, and performing research in context. The interviews with the design coaches largely confirmed the importance of both the realistic teamwork experience that accompanies NPD and user research skills. Our findings reinforce the importance of providing students with real multidisciplinary team experience for NPD projects and suggest that greater emphasis be given to the teaching and practice of “softer” skills, such as listening, negotiation, empathy, and observation. The research also indicates that more guidance, tools, and frameworks are needed to assist student product developers in the complex task of gathering, managing, and applying user needs.

Evaluating the Discriminatory Value and Reliability of Ideation Metrics for Their Application to Concept Development and Prototyping

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Menold ◽  
Kathryn Jablokow ◽  
Timothy Simpson ◽  
Rafael Seuro
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
New Product ◽  
Concept Development ◽  
Product Development Process ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Market Place ◽  
Design Changes ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Original Concept

Approximately half of new product development projects fail in the market place. Within the product development process, prototyping represents the largest sunk cost; it also remains the least researched and understood. While researchers have recently started to evaluate the impact of formalized prototyping methods and frameworks on end designs, these studies have typically evaluated the success or failure of these methods using binary metrics, and they often evaluate only the design’s technical feasibility. Intuitively, we know that a product’s success or failure in the marketplace is determined by far more than just the product’s technical quality; and yet, we have no clear way of evaluating the design changes and pivots that occur during concept development and prototyping activities, as an explicit set of rigorous and informative metrics to evaluate ideas after concept selection does not exist. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the discriminatory value and reliability of ideation metrics originally developed for concept generation as metrics to evaluate functional prototypes and related concepts developed throughout prototyping activities. Our investigation revealed that new metrics are needed in order to understand the translation of product characteristics, such as originality, novelty, and quality, from original concept through concept development and prototyping to finalized product.

New methodology for product development process using structured tools

2020 ◽  
pp. 095440542097122
Author(s):  
Carlos Relvas ◽  
António Ramos
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Development Process ◽  
New Product ◽  
Development Cooperation ◽  
Product Development Process ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Systematic Method ◽  
Development Team ◽  
Future Developments

The product development is a multidisciplinary process but also involves different areas of knowledge ranging from creativity in concept generation to refinement of design and finally the validation of the product. There are different approaches that attempt to define the best product development process, and thereby establishes a reliable method for efficiently transforming ideas into products. The use of a method that systematically establishes a work process seems to be highly advantageous, not only because it defines a critical and guiding path of work, organizing the tasks and their results, but also facilitates the communication of the development team. The methodology can provide records and other graphic documents that allow the development team to access these for future developments. The work presented here is the development of a systematic method supported by the use of structured tools to support the decisions, data processing and transposition of the same to the project in the approach to the new Product Development process. This research methodology was introduced and already implemented in projects at Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Aveiro. The work developed on it, both at the level of the students’ project and in the work of Development cooperation with companies presented good results. This method result in a structured way to transforming ideas into products.

Customer Requirement Driving New Product Concept Generation Method Based on Naïve Bayes Cluster and RST

2012 ◽  
Vol 490-495 ◽  
pp. 2160-2164
Author(s):  
Li Lin ◽  
Gang Guo
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Rough Set Theory ◽  
Naive Bayes ◽  
New Product ◽  
Naïve Bayes ◽  
New Method ◽  
Concept Design ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Product Concept

Product concept generation and concept design are major activities for obtaining an optimal concept in new product development (NPD). A customer requirements driving new product concept generation method is addressed in this paper. This study proposes a new method to generate product concept, through which NPD team acquire customers’ requirement and product attributes. The new method is based on integrating of Naïve Bayes cluster and rough set theory (RST). It takes marketing strategy, business strategy into consideration, which makes new product development more effective compared with the traditional method. We believe that the proposed method will have a positive significance on the future new product development

Managing Lessons Learned and Tacit Knowledge in New Product Development

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 39-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Goffin ◽  
Ursula Koners ◽  
David Baxter ◽  
Chris van der Hoven
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
Tacit Knowledge ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
New Product ◽  
Lessons Learned

Preliminary Design of Amorphous Products

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt A. Beiter ◽  
Tae G. Yang ◽  
Kos Ishii
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
New Product ◽  
Preliminary Design ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Physical Systems ◽  
Amorphous Systems ◽  
Key Points

This paper addresses the early design and development of amorphous systems. As competitive differentiators, many companies are focusing on amorphous systems comprised of primarily non-physical components, such as software, firmware, and service or business processes. This paper contrasts the development of amorphous systems with that of traditional physical systems. Whereas many tools used in new product development do apply to amorphous systems, the process and the tools need adaptation. The key points are: 1) Modeling of the system using “solution elements” instead of parts, 2) Preliminary concept generation based on use scenarios, and 3) Early consideration of the business model in the context of a complex value chain. The paper presents our proposed 10 step guide to amorphous product development and illustrates it with a “smart refrigerator” example, as well as citing the guide’s deployment in industry.

Re-Examining the Relationship Between Team Work Quality and Speed of New Product Development

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asmat-Nizam Abdul-Talib ◽  
Turki Abdullah Alanazi ◽  
Hasbullah Ashari ◽  
Siti Norhasmaedayu Mohd Zamani
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
Market Orientation ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
New Product ◽  
Internal Market ◽  
Team Work ◽  
Mediating Effect ◽  
Work Quality ◽  
Internal Market Orientation ◽  
The Relationship

Previous research has consistently demonstrated that team work quality plays an important role in predicting the speed of new product development (NPD). However, the examination of the fundamental mechanisms behind this relationship has received less attention than it deserves. Drawing on the resource-based view and internal market orientation theories, this chapter examines mediating effect of internal market orientation in the relationship between teamwork quality and speed of new product development. One hundred and forty-nine team members drawn from the telecom companies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia participated in this study. Partial least squares path modelling was employed to test mediating effect of internal market orientation in the relationship between teamwork quality and NPD speed. Findings suggest a positive relationship between teamwork quality and NPD speed. As hypothesized, the findings showed that of internal market orientation mediated the relationship between teamwork quality and NPD speed.

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