midterm

Question 1

What is product development?

Answer 1

The set of activities beginning with the perception of a market opportunity and
ending in the production, sale, and delivery of a product

Question 2

What are characteristics of

Answer 2

successful product development?
Identify the needs of customers and to quickly create products that meet these needs

Question 3

What are three major innovation challenges?

Answer 3

The need is real
The solution meets the need
The user/ customer is willing to pay more for the solution than it costs to provide

Question 4

What are potential ways of establishing project teams?
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Answer 4

The collection of individuals developing a product forms the project team. This team usually has a single team leader, who could be drawn from any of the functions of the firm. The team can be thought of as page 4consisting of a core team and an extended team. In order to work together effectively, the core team usually remains small enough to meet in a conference room, while the extended team may consist of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of other members.

Question 5

Describe the process of product development.

Answer 5

planning
phase 0
concept development
phase 1
system level design
phase 2
detail design
phase 3
testing and refinement
phase 4
production ramp up
phase 5

Question 6

What marketing activities are associated with different stages of product development?
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Answer 6

planning
articulate marketing opportunities
define market segments
concept development
collect customer needs
identify lead users
benchmark competitive products
system level design
develop plan for product options and extended product family
detail design
develop marketing plan
testing and refinement
develop promotion and launch materials
facilitate field testing
production ramp up
place early production with key customers

Question 7

What is Push vs. Pull in product development?

Answer 7

push advertising aims to push products towards specific customers, while pull advertising focuses on the right people at the right time. Push marketing, specifically, is a strategy managers use to promote their products to consumers

Question 8

What is Stage-Gate product development?

Answer 8

The stages in the Stage-Gate are Discover, Scoping, Define Business Case, Development, Testing and Validation and Launch.
There is a gate between every two stages where the process can be tested and validated to determine whether the team should move to the next step or an iteration should be applied in the current step to improve before moving to the next one.

Question 9

What are some trends in the product development process?

Answer 9

Mass Adoption of 3D Printing. …
Internet of Things Aids Product Integration. …
Vendors Use Data For Rapid Product Development Feedback. …
Digital Design Lowers Costs and Increases Efficiency. …
Personalized Products Drive Development.

Question 10

Describe technology adoption curve as proposed by Rogers in Diffusion of Innovations.

Answer 10

Innovators
Risk takers who have the resources and desire to try new things, even if they fail
Early Adopters
Selective about which technologies they start using. They are considered the “one to check in with” for new information and reduce others uncertainty about a new technology by adopting it
Early majority
Take their time before adopting a new idea. They are willing to embrace a new technology as long as they understand how it fits with their lives
Late Majority
Adopt in reaction to peer pressure emerging norms, or economic necessity. Most of the uncertainty around an idea must be resolved before they adopt.
Laggards
Traditional and make decisions based on past experiences. They are unable to take risks on new ideas.

Question 11

What are 5 stages in the innovation decision process?

Answer 11

knowledge
(2) persuasion
(3) decision
4) implementation
(5) confirmation

Question 12

What are perceived attributes of innovation?

Answer 12

Relative advantage
Compatibility
Complexity
Trialability
Observability

Question 13

What is an opportunity in the product development process?

Answer 13

opportunity is an idea for a new product. An opportunity is a product description in embryonic form, a newly sensed need, a newly discovered technology, or a rough match between a need and a possible solution

Question 14

Describe opportunity identification process and

Answer 14

Establish a charter.
Generate and sense many opportunities.
Screen opportunities.
Develop promising opportunities.
Select exceptional opportunities.
Reflect on the results and the process.

Question 15

types of opportunities.

Answer 15

Horizon 1 opportunities are largely improvements, extensions, variants, and cost reductions of existing products for existing markets. They are relatively low-risk opportunities.
Horizon 2 opportunities push out into less-known territory in one or both of the dimensions of the market or the technology.
Horizon 3 opportunities represent attempts to exploit opportunities that in some way are new to the world, embodying the highest level of uncertainty.

Question 16

What are some criteria for evaluating new product opportunities?

Answer 16

People “Desirable”
Business “Viable”
Technical “Feasibility”

Question 17

What is an innovation?

Answer 17

A new match between a solution and a need

Question 18

What is Real-Win-Worth-It (RWW) Framework?

Answer 18

Is there a real market and a real product
Can we win? Can our product or service be competitive? Can we succeed as a company?
Is it worth doing? Is the return adequate and the risk acceptable?

Question 19

What is the Blue Ocean Strategy?

Answer 19

New market space
Companies expand or go across industry boundaries
Competition is irrelevant in the blue uncharted waters
Significant opportunity for profitable growth

Question 20

What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?

Answer 20

A minimum viable product (MVP) is a launch version of a product with an elementary set of features to gain customers with the least effort while learning about their needs.
These original customers provide feedback that helps fine-tune the product into a fully-fledged product later through a series of iterations.

Question 21

What is product planning?

Answer 21

The product plan identifies the portfolio of products to be developed by the organization and the timing of their introduction to the market.
The planning process considers product development opportunities identified by many sources, including suggestions from marketing, sales force, technical research, customers, current product development teams, customer service, product support, and benchmarking of competitors.

Question 22

Describe the process and key steps.
product planning

Answer 22

step 1
identify opportunities
step 2
evaluate and prioritize projects
step 3
allocate resources and plan timing
step 4
complete pre project training
Mission statement
Brief description of the product
Benefit proposition
Key business goals
Primary market
Assumptions and constraints
Stakeholders
step 5
reflect on the results and the process

Question 23

What is market segmentation?

Answer 23

Dividing a market into segments allows the firm to consider the actions of competitors and the strength of the firm’s existing products with respect to each well-defined group of customers.
By mapping competitors’ products and the firm’s own products onto segments, the firm can assess which product opportunities best address weaknesses in its own product line and which exploit weaknesses in the offerings of competitors

Question 24

What is a mission statement in product development?

Answer 24

Team needs to know its mission before beginning development
■ What market segments should be considered in designing the product
and developing its features?
■ What new technologies and what key features should be incorporated into
the new product
■ What are the manufacturing and service goals and constraints?
■ What are the financial targets for the project?
■ What are the budget and time frame for the project?

Question 25

What are four types of product development projects?

Answer 25

New product platforms
Derivatives of existing product platforms
Incremental improvements to existing products
Fundamentally new products

Question 26

What is a customer development process?

Answer 26

Customer Development consists of asking potential customers open-ended questions and presenting them with hypothetical solutions to evaluate just how on or off-target they might be.
It is not a sales pitch or a way to nurture leads; it is 100% information gathering, discovery, and confirmation of assumptions.

Question 27

Describe what goes into the customer development model.

Answer 27

Search
■ Customer Discovery
■ Customer Validation
Execution
■ Customer Creation
■ Company Building

Question 28

What is a chasm in the customer development process?

Answer 28

This is a sociological model that describes the adoption or acceptance of a new product or innovation, according to the demographic and psychological characteristics of defined adopter groups

Question 29

How do we identify customer needs?

Answer 29

Step 1
Gather raw data from customers
Interviews, focus groups, observation, ethnography
Step 2
Interpret raw data in terms of customer needs
Step 3
Organize the needs into a hierarchy
Step 4
Establish the relative importance of the needs
Step 5
Reflect on the results and the process

Question 30

What goes into the process?

customer needs

Answer 30

Capture “what, not how”
○ Observe real customers in the use environment
○ Collect visual, verbal, and textual data
○ Interviews are more efficient than focus groups
○ Interview all stakeholders and lead users
○ Props will stimulate customer responses
○ Develop an organized list of need statements
○ Look for latent needs
○ Survey to quantify tradeoffs, if necessary
○ Use photos or video to communicate results

Question 31

What are some typical questions you would ask in the customer interview?

Answer 31

job
age
sex

Question 32

How would you explain a consumer’s latent needs in your own words?

Answer 32

Needs that customers may not be aware of and are not able to express
When latent needs are addressed, products may delight and exceed customers expectations

Question 33

What is a concept development process?

Answer 33

○ Clarify
Clarify the problem (understanding, problem description, focus on critical subproblems)
subproblems
Search
Search externally (Lead users, patents, literature, benchmarking)
Existing concepts
Search
Search internally (individual, group)
New concepts
Explore
Explore systematically (classification tree, combination table)
Integrated solutions
Reflect on

Question 34

How do we translate customer needs to product specifications?

Answer 34

interviews?

Question 35

What is the Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) Theory?

Answer 35

A Job to Be Done is the process a consumer goes through whenever she
evolves herself through buying and using a product.
It begins when the customer becomes aware of the possibility to evolve. It
continues as long as the desired progress is sought.
It ends when the consumer realizes new capabilities and behaves differently, or
abandons the idea of evolving

Question 36

Give an example of JTBD from aspiration to a micro-job

Answer 36

When new features are added to a product, I want to know if and how those changes impact performance so that I can ensure my product works as expected for users.?

Question 37

Explain a customer job story based on situation, motivation, and expected outcome.

Answer 37

Job stories also referred to as a jobs-to-be-done framework are nothing but a more generalized and enhanced version of user stories that primarily focus on defining user tasks in a product design. They are considered to be a great alternative for user stories.?

Question 38

What is a concept?

Answer 38

A product concept is an approximate description of the technology, working
principles, and form of the product
It is a concise description of how the product will satisfy the customer needs
A concept is usually expressed as a sketch or as a rough three dimensional model and is often accompanied by a brief textual description

Question 39

Describe a concept generation process.

Answer 39

Concept generation is the process of creating ideas for designing a product based on the target specifications and requirements. These ideas describe the design and working principles of the product, along with how it can meet the customer requirements.

Question 40

What are the rules of brainstorming of new ideas?

Answer 40

Defer judgment of ideas
Build on the ideas of others
Encourage wild ideas
Express ideas visually
Stay focused on the topic
One conversation at a time
Use stimuli related to the topic

Question 41

What is a start-up?

Answer 41

A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model
A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.

Question 42

Describe Lean Start-up model

Answer 42

Lean startup is a method to address uncertainty through rapid iteration and market learning systematically.

Question 43

What are different methods for doing consumer research?

Answer 43

quantitative
qualitative

Question 44

What is a product-market fit?
i

Answer 44

s the degree to which a product satisfies a strong market demand.

Question 45

What goes into a Lean Business Canvas?

Answer 45

These include problem, solution, key metrics, unique value proposition, unfair advantage, channels, customer segments, cost structure, and revenue streams

Question 46

What are similarities between lean canvas models and traditional marketing plans?

Answer 46

understanding the target audience
the value of your company to the new market
how will you make money

Question 47

What are some methods for choosing a concept?

Answer 47

External decision:
Concepts are turned over to the customer, client, or some other external entity for selection.
Product champion:
An influential member of the product development team chooses a concept based on personal preference.
Intuition:
The concept is chosen by its feel. Explicit criteria or trade-offs are not used. The concept just seems better.
Multivoting:
Each member of the team votes for several concepts. The concept with the most votes is selected.
Online survey/crowdsourcing:
Using an online survey tool, each concept is rated by many people to find the best ones.
Pros and cons:
The team lists the strengths and weaknesses of each concept and makes a choice based upon group opinion.
Prototype and test:
The organization builds and tests prototypes of each concept, making a selection based upon test data.
Decision matrices:
The team rates each concept against prespecified selection criteria, which may be weighted.

Question 48

If you approach choosing a concept based on set criteria – how do you approach it structurally?

Answer 48

A customer-focused product:
Because concepts are explicitly evaluated against customer-oriented criteria, the selected concept is likely to be focused on the customer.
A competitive design:
By benchmarking concepts with respect to existing designs, designers push the design to match or exceed their competitors’ performance along key dimensions.
Better product-process coordination:
Explicit evaluation of the product with respect to manufacturing criteria improves the product’s manufacturability and helps to match the product with the process capabilities of the firm.
Reduced time to product introduction:
A structured method becomes a common language among design engineers, manufacturing engineers, industrial designers, marketers, and project managers, resulting in decreased ambiguity, faster communication, and fewer false starts.
Effective group decision making:
Within the development team, organizational philosophy and guidelines, willingness of members to participate, and team member experience may constrain the concept selection process. A structured method encourages decision making based on objective criteria and minimizes the likelihood that arbitrary or personal factors influence the product concept.
Documentation of the decision process:
A structured method results in a readily understood archive of the rationale behind concept decisions. This record is useful for assimilating new team members and for quickly assessing the impact of changes in the customer needs or in the available alternatives.

Question 49

What is concept testing?

Answer 49

the development team solicits a response to a description of the product concept from potential customers in the target market.
Concept testing may be used to select which of two or more concepts should be pursued, to gather information from potential customers on how to improve a concept, and to estimate the sales potential of the product
Concept testing is sometimes called resonance testing since it is a way to learn if a product concept “resonates” with customers

Question 50

What would be key steps here?

concept testing

Answer 50

define the purpose of the test
choose a survey population
choose a survey format
communicate the concept
measure customer response
interpret the results
reflect on the results and the process