Product innovation makes use of a wide range of methodologies, concepts, and techniques, which we often simply refer to as tools. Tools are used as products move through the different phases of the product innovation process, evolving an idea into a product concept that then moves through deeper design and development, resulting in a product to launch to markets. Some tools are specific to certain phases of the product innovation process, while others are applied in many areas.
In this chapter, we focus on tools that are more specifically applied to the design and development phases of the product innovation process. Each of these phases benefits significantly from applying tools to reduce uncertainty and ambiguity and to assure conformance with the design's customer requirements and technical specifications. The most commonly used tools are described, their advantages, and where they can be applied at the various phases of product design and development.
PDMA's 2021 Best Practices Study shows that the “best companies” are more likely to use design and development tools than the “rest” of the companies (Knudsen et al., 2023).
THE CHAPTER ROADMAP ...
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