July 2014

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 24 jul 2014

Innovation has been considered as a critical component of the strategies of most companies and to achieve it they have tried to transform and eliminate activities from their product development process (PDP). Is this is the better approach? Probably not. Bradford Goldense, an expert in product management & development, suggests ways to improve and build innovativeness into the PDP itself - (1) Companies should add innovation activities at appropriate places in their PDP. (2) Companies should emphasize existing activities that spur appreciable innovative thinking. Moreover there are a variety of soft, quantitative and algorithmic tools, that are available in the market to boost innovation. He suggests selection of three tools spanning incremental to breakthrough innovation, reguired to be used at key points in the concept, definition and design phases, chosen by the nature of the product being developed. It is also found that some deterministic tools spur more innovative thinking than others. Research of 200 companies provides insights into which PDP activities out of the total 20, scored the highest innovation benefits. These were - Requirements definition; Product specifications; Technical feasibility analysis. Some other activities that were closely behind were - Concepting/Concept engineering; Voice of the customer; Market definition. Read on...

machine design: Making Product Development More Innovative
Author: Bradford Goldense