Virtual Teams in Practice

2011 ◽  
pp. 202-222
Author(s):  
John M. Feland
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Innovation Process ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Customer Expectations ◽  
Fuzzy Front End ◽  
Front End ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
New Framework

A growing number of enterprises are building virtual teams to assist in crafting new opportunities in the fuzzy front end of the innovation process. Using the tools of design thinking, these creative virtual teams have different management requirements than virtual teams used in the more routine efforts of product development. This chapter uses examples from industry to examine the challenges of managing customer expectations, explore the membership dynamics of virtual teams, and suggest a new framework for assessing the progress of creative virtual teams, concept maturity. An example from the creative virtual team at Synaptics, the Red Dot Award winning Onyx mobile phone concept, is used to delve deeper into these concepts. Finally, trends for the diffusion of creative virtual teams as well as potential challenges in bringing such teams into your organization are investigated.

scholarly journals Rethinking Virtual Teams for Streamlined Development

2008 ◽  
pp. 1646-1664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Larsson ◽  
Tobias Larsson ◽  
Nicklas Bylund ◽  
Ola Isaksson
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Fuzzy Front End ◽  
Front End ◽  
Shared Culture ◽  
Shared Goals ◽  
Contractual Agreements ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Risky Business

Much of the research on creative teams tends to focus mainly on relatively small teams working in the fuzzy front-end of product development. In this chapter, we bring a complementary perspective from an industry context where creativity is often perceived as risky business—yet a precondition for success. Here, we focus closely on people and teams that might not usually describe their own work to be of a primarily ‘creative’ nature, and that currently work under circumstances where traditional approaches for enhancing creativity might no longer be applicable. Drawing from experiences in automotive and aerospace development, we argue that it is time to radically progress our current understanding of how creativity could be introduced in organizations where factors like legal demands and contractual agreements severely restrict ‘outside-the-box’ thinking, and where well-known creativity enablers such as trust, shared goals, and shared culture are becoming increasingly difficult to accomplish.

The Fuzzy Front End: Concept Development in the Automotive Industry

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christer W. Elverum ◽  
Torgeir Welo ◽  
Martin Steinert
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Automotive Industry ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Innovation Process ◽  
New Product ◽  
Product Development Process ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Fuzzy Front End ◽  
Front End

The fuzzy front end (FFE) of new product development (NPD) is a term that refers to the early stages of the innovation process. This paper investigates the FFE in the automotive industry and addresses the challenges of working in this phase of the innovation process, as well as the academic definition of the FFE relative to the real world. Two parts of the innovation process have been identified and characterized as FFE: the concept-work within satellite front-end departments and the work within the pre-development phase of the vehicle new product development process. It has been identified that one of the greatest challenges related to working in the FFE is developing viable concepts that will “sell” internally. Estimating and conveying the overall value of the final product in terms of costs and customer benefits are two of the key elements that make it difficult to achieve internal “buy in”. Furthermore, it is argued that the most common academic perception of the FFE seem to be inadequate since it only concerns work that ends with a go/no-go decision whether to continue into development or not. Consequently, it fails to capture early-stage development work of transformational innovations, where the decision of development has already been made and the uncertainty is related to the execution of the work — and — not the outcome. Semi-structured interviews with a total of eleven employees at seven different automotive OEMs form the basis for the conclusions made herein.

scholarly journals 266 Fuzzy front-end studies: current state and future directions for new product development

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dongmyung Park ◽  
Ji Han ◽  
Peter R. N. Childs
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Process Parameters ◽  
Model Development ◽  
Innovation Process ◽  
New Product ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Fuzzy Front End ◽  
Front End ◽  
Performance Structure

Abstract266 fuzzy front-end (FFE) studies in the new product development (NPD) sector were examined. The studies were selected using a bibliometrics method, and chronologically and statistically examined with ten criteria divided into two dimensions. The first dimension is associated with overall attributes of the FFE, consisting of six criteria: the study taxonomy, model type, NPD speed, NPD attributes, model characteristic, and model structure. The second dimension is relevant to the FFE performance structure related to process parameters, comprised of four criteria: the FFE task, activity, performance method, and toolkit. In terms of those two dimensions, the paper looks at previous FFE studies to gain an understanding of features of each FFE study along with related knowledge and theories, as well as identification of evolution trends of FFE studies. Based on the identification, an FFE model development strategy for each criterion is formulated, and this paper proposes possible options for executing those strategies which exert influence on the form of the cluster network. The intention is for the database to be utilised as an overview of all existing FFE studies and allow specific FFE studies to be selected to examine FFE approaches.This paper provides FFE model development guidance on how to deal with the overall attributes and outcomes of the FFE which affect the entirety of the innovation process, and how to manage the performance structure related to process parameters.

scholarly journals Rethinking Virtual Teams for Streamlined Development

2011 ◽  
pp. 138-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Larsson ◽  
Tobias Larsson
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Fuzzy Front End ◽  
Front End ◽  
Shared Culture ◽  
Shared Goals ◽  
Contractual Agreements ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Risky Business

Much of the research on creative teams tends to focus mainly on relatively small teams working in the fuzzy front-end of product development. In this chapter, we bring a complementary perspective from an industry context where creativity is often perceived as risky business—yet a precondition for success. Here, we focus closely on people and teams that might not usually describe their own work to be of a primarily ‘creative’ nature, and that currently work under circumstances where traditional approaches for enhancing creativity might no longer be applicable. Drawing from experiences in automotive and aerospace development, we argue that it is time to radically progress our current understanding of how creativity could be introduced in organizations where factors like legal demands and contractual agreements severely restrict ‘outside-the-box’ thinking, and where well-known creativity enablers such as trust, shared goals, and shared culture are becoming increasingly difficult to accomplish.

Aided System of Competence Management for Virtual Team Building Adapted to Specific Needs of Design Projects

2010 ◽  
pp. 293-312
Author(s):  
Marinita Schumacher ◽  
Julie Stal Le Cardinal ◽  
Jean-Claude Bocquet
Keyword(s):  
Functional Analysis ◽  
Product Development ◽  
Virtual Teams ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Team Building ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Future Trends ◽  
Virtual Design ◽  
Competence Management ◽  
Design Projects

Virtual instruments and tools are future trends in Engineering which are due to the growing complexity of engineering tasks. Individuals who are working in Virtual Teams must be equipped with spanning competencies that provide a basis for Virtual Team building. In the first step this chapter gives a broad insight to the field of Competence Management and Virtual Teams. The second step responds to the need of a method of Competence Management to build Virtual Teams that are active in virtual design projects in the area of New Product Development (NPD). Due to the systemic approach of the functional analysis, we present an Aided Competence Management for Virtual Team Building System (Aided CMVTB System) that permits to be adapted not only to organizations but also to design projects without a real organizational structure. The focus of this work is set on the generic aspect to highlight the adaptability and flexibility of the system.

scholarly journals The role of temporal coordination for the fuzzy front-end of innovation in virtual teams

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 182-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petros Chamakiotis ◽  
Achilleas Boukis ◽  
Niki Panteli ◽  
Thanos Papadopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Temporal Coordination ◽  
Fuzzy Front End ◽  
Front End
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