UNDERSTANDING LINEAR AND NONLINEAR ASPECTS OF PRODUCT CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT FROM THE ORGANISATIONAL INTERPRETATION PERSPECTIVE

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (02) ◽  
pp. 1650027
Author(s):  
MANABU MIYAO

The product concept is crucial in new product development (NPD) because it represents an NPD project’s goal. In this context, most prior studies have regarded product concept development as a linear process but some recent studies have revealed that it also has nonlinear characteristics. The objective of this paper is to explore why this inconsistency has arisen and to develop a model and theory that illustrate both aspects of product concept development. To achieve this, we adopt the perspective of organisational interpretation systems (Daft and Weick (1984). Toward a model of organisations as interpretation systems. Academy of Management Review, 9(2), 289–295) and explore eight product development cases. Consequently, we develop a three-stage model and find that the linearity or nonlinearity of product concept development is determined by each NPD team’s assumption about the environment. We also consider product innovativeness and function equivocality, and establish that these are related to the NPD teams’ assumptions about the environment.

Author(s):  
Swithin S. Razu ◽  
Shun Takai

Estimation of demand is one of the most important tasks in new product development. How customers come to appreciate and decide to purchase a new product impacts demand and hence profit of the product. Unfortunately, when designers select a new product concept early in the product development process, the future demand of the new product is not known. Conjoint analysis is a statistical method that has been used to estimate a demand of a new product concept from customer survey data. Although conjoint analysis has been increasingly incorporated in design engineering as a method to estimate a demand of a new product design, it has not been fully employed to model demand uncertainty. This paper demonstrates and compares two approaches that use conjoint analysis data to model demand uncertainty: bootstrap of respondent choice data and Monte Carlo simulation of utility estimation errors. Reliability of demand distribution and accuracy of demand estimation are compared for the two approaches in an illustrative example.


Author(s):  
Jessica Menold ◽  
Kathryn Jablokow ◽  
Timothy Simpson ◽  
Rafael Seuro

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.


Author(s):  
Swithin S. Razu ◽  
Shun Takai

Analysis of customer preferences is among the most important tasks in a new product development. How customers come to appreciate and decide to purchase a new product affects the products market share and therefore its success or failure. Unfortunately, when designers select a product concept early in the product development process, customer preference response to the new product is unknown. Conjoint analysis is a statistical marketing tool that has been used to estimate market shares of new product concepts by analyzing data on the product ratings, rankings or concept choices of customers. This paper proposes an alternative to traditional conjoint analysis methods that provide point estimates of market shares. It proposes two approaches to model market share uncertainty; bootstrap and binomial inference applied to choice-based conjoint analysis data. The proposed approaches are demonstrated and compared using an illustrative example.


2012 ◽  
Vol 490-495 ◽  
pp. 2160-2164
Author(s):  
Li Lin ◽  
Gang Guo

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


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-65
Author(s):  
Teegan Green ◽  
Jay Weerawardena

Managing the “fuzzy front-end” (FFE) of new product development (NPD) is critical for NPD success. To simulate this reality, we tasked self-selecting undergraduate teams of four to six students with developing a substantially innovative new product concept. Integrating Vygotskian and Piagetian perspectives on social constructivism and experiential learning, we designed an authentic assessment pushing students into the FFE of NPD, featuring a live pitch to an expert industry panel. Pre-and-post survey results suggest students prefer authentic assessment infused with real-world learning experiences such as the pitch. Encouragingly, students perceived less usefulness over time for animate (e.g., teaching staff) and inanimate (e.g., textbooks) resources, indicating increased reliance on oneself post-assessment. Qualitative characteristics noted by students were group work, academic success, and the degree of challenge. Our approach is relevant for educators seeking to infuse their teaching—and enthuse students—with authentic assessment, addressing limitations of teacher-centered andragogy.


1995 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric M. Olson ◽  
Orville C. Walker ◽  
Robert W. Ruekert

Marketing and sales personnel are frequently called on to work with—and sometimes to lead—specialists from other functional areas in the development of new products and services. Such cross-functional interactions can be structured and coordinated in a variety of ways, from bureaucratic approaches to more decentralized participatory mechanisms. Recently, cross-functional team structures have received a great deal of positive press. However, this paper questions whether teams are a universal panacea for shortening development times and improving success rates across all types of projects. It presents a contingency model based on resource dependency theory, which suggests that more participative structures are likely to improve the effectiveness and timeliness of the development process when the product being developed is truly new and innovative. However, the model also predicts that more bureaucratic structures may produce better outcomes on less innovative projects, such as those involving line extensions or product improvements. An empirical test involving 45 projects from 12 firms in widely varying industries substantially supports the model's predictions. The findings indicate that the better the fit between the newness of the product concept and the participativeness of the coordination mechanism used the better the outcomes of the development process in terms of (1) objective measures of product and team performance, (2) the attitudes of team members toward the process, and (3) the efficiency and timeliness of the new product development process.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document