New methods for product concept development in early phases

In the pre-study ´Framtidens produktframtagning I svenska företag´ for Vinnova it was concluded that many Swedish companies that aspire to be future innovation leaders experience a key challenge in creating novel product concepts. Due to the way current stage-gate processes are designed, new product projects are initiated either through explicit customer needs or through analysis of internal technical problems. The result is often low

innovativeness in the new products launched. In addition, Swedish firms that aspire to be

innovation leaders have new product development processes that are far behind global innovation leaders such as IBM, Apple and Google. In follow-up conversations with several of the companies that participated in the prestudy, that have high future ambitions in new product development, it is clear that the so-called ´phase 0´ in their stage-gate processes can improve significantly with systematic product concept creation methods that take a starting point elsewhere than customers or internal problems. Instead, companies can benefit from methods such as scenario analysis, search breadth and depth, and improved communication, such as the IBM World Jam or P&Gs simplexity thinking, that allow firms to create more innovative ideas and product concepts. To this background, the purpose of the project is to identify, test and implement methods for product concept development that lie in the very forefront of idea- and concept development in the early phases of product development. The project is conducted in collaboration with Duroc Special Steel, Nordic Light, Liko and LEAB that all aspire to develop future innovation leadership, complemented by several other reference group companies.