Terminologies Flashcards
Accidental Discovery
New designs, ideas, and developments resulting from unexpected insight, which is obtained either inside or outside the organization.
Adaptable products
Products that respond and adapt to their users or to changes in their surroundings over time.
Adoption curve
The phases that consumers or markets go through when deciding to adopt a new product or technology. At the individual level, each consumer must move from a cognitive state (becoming aware of and knowledgeable about the product or technology) to an emotional state (liking and then preferring the product or technology) and then to a conative, or behavioral, state (deciding and then purchasing the product or technology). In the marketplace, the new product or technology is purchased first by the innovators, who generally constitute about 2.5 percent of the market. Early adopters (13.5 percent of the market) are the next to buy, followed by the early majority (34 percent), the late majority (34 percent), and finally, the laggards (16 percent)
Affinity charting
A bottom-up technique for discovering connections between pieces of data. An individual or a group starts with one piece of data (say, a customer need). They then look through the rest of their data (say, statements of other customer needs) to find other data (needs) similar to the first and place it in the same group. As they come across pieces of data that differ from those in the first group, they create a new category. The result is a set of groups where the data contained within a category are similar, and the groups all differ in some way. See also Qualitative Cluster Analysis.
Qualitative cluster Analysis
An individual- or group-based process using informed intuition for clustering and connecting data points.
Alliance
Formal arrangement with a separate company for purposes of development, and involving exchange of information, hardware, intellectual property, or enabling technology. Alliances involve shared risk and reward (for example, codevelopment projects).
Alpha test
Preproduction product testing to find and eliminate the most obvious design defects or deficiencies. Alpha testing is usually done in a laboratory setting or in some part of the developing firm’s regular operations. In some cases, it may be done in controlled settings with lead customers. See also Beta Test and Gamma Test.
Analogical Thinking
Involves attempting to solve a problem in one domain or area by looking at solutions to other problems in other domains whose situation resembles that of the current problem. A common approach is to look to nature to see how it solves the same problem.
Analytical Hierarchal Process
A decision-making tool for complex multicriteria problems where both qualitative and quantitative aspects of a problem need to be incorporated. AHP clusters the information for decision making, according to its common characteristics, into a hierarchical arrangement similar to a family tree or affinity chart.
Analyzer
A firm that follows an imitative innovation strategy where the goal is to get to market with an equivalent or slightly better product quickly once someone else opens the market. Sometimes called an imitator or a fast follower.
Anticipatory Failure Determination (AFD)
A failure analysis method. In this process, developers start from a particular failure of interest as the intended result and try to devise ways to ensure that the failure always happens reliably. Then the developers use that information to develop ways to better identify steps to avoid the failure.
Application Development
The iterative process through which software is designed and written to meet the needs and requirements of the user base or the process of improving or developing new products.
Asynchronous Groupware:
Software that is used to help people work as
groups but does not require those people to work at the same time.
Audit (process)
When applied to new product development, an appraisal of the effectiveness of the processes by which the new product was developed and brought to market.
Augmented Product
The core product, plus all other sources of product benefits, such as service, warranty, and image.
Autonomous product
An adaptable product that is able to operate in an independent and goal-directed way without user input.
Autonomous team (tiger team)
A self-sufficient project team with very little, if any, link to the funding organization. Often used as an organizational model to bring a radical innovation to the marketplace.
Awareness
A measure of the percentage of target customers who are aware that the new product exists. Awareness is variously defined, including recall of the brand, recognition of the brand, and recall of key features or positioning.
Backup
A project that moves forward, either in synchrony or with a moderate time lag, for the same marketplace as the lead project and provides an alternative asset should the lead project fail in development. A backup has essentially the same mechanism of action performance as the lead project. Normally, a company would not advance both the lead and the backup project through to the marketplace because they would compete directly with each other.
Balanced scorecard
A comprehensive performance measurement technique that balances four performance dimensions: (1) customer views of how the company is performing; (2) internal views of how well the company is doing in what it must excel at; (3) innovation and learning performance; and (4) financial performance.
Benchmarking
Collecting process performance data from several organizations to allow the company to assess their performance individually and across organizations. The data that are collected are normally considered confidential.
Benefit
A product attribute expressed in terms of what the user gets from the product rather than its physical characteristics or features. Benefits are often paired with specific features, but they need not be.
Best (effective) Practice
Methods, tools, or techniques that are associated with improved performance. In new product development, no one tool or technique ensures success; however, a number of them are associated with a higher probability of achieving success. Best practices are at least somewhat context specific. Sometimes they are called effective practices.
Best Practice Study
A process of studying successful organizations and selecting the best of their actions or processes for emulation. In new product development, it means finding the best process practices and adapting and adopting them for internal use.
Beta test
An external test of preproduction products. The purpose is to evaluate the product’s functionality across a variety of field situations before sale to the general market in order to find those system faults that are more likely to appear during actual use. See also Field Testing.
Brainstorming
A group method of creative problem solving frequently used in product concept generation. There are many variations in format, each with its own name. The basis of all of these methods is the use of a group of people to creatively generate a list of ideas related to a particular topic. As many ideas as possible are listed before any critical evaluation is performed.
Brand
A name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers. It may identify one item, a family of items, or all items of that seller.
Trademark
Provides legal protection for a brand.
Brand Development Index (BDI)
A measure of the relative strength of a brand’s sales in a geographic area. Computationally, it is the percentage of total national brand sales that occur in an area divided by the percentage of the country’s households that reside in that area.
Breadboard
A proof-of-concept modeling technique that shows how a product will work but not how it will look.
Break-Even Point
The point in the commercial life of a product when cumulative development costs are recovered through accrued profits from sales.
Business Analysis
An analysis of the business surrounding a proposed project. Usually includes financial forecasts in the form of discounted cash flows, net present values, or internal rates of returns.
Business Case
The results of the up-front homework found in market, technical, and financial analyses. Ideally, they are defined just before the “go to development” decision (gate). The business case defines the product and project, including the project’s justification and the action or business plan.
Business to Business (industrial businesses)
Transactions with nonconsumer buyers such as manufacturers, resellers (distributors, wholesalers, jobbers, and retailers, for example), and institutional, professional, and governmental organizations. Often referred to as industrial businesses.
Buyer
The purchaser of a product or service, whether or not he or she will be the eventual user. Especially in business-to-business markets, a purchasing agent may contract for the purchase of a product or service, yet never benefit from the function(s) purchased.
Buyer concentration
The degree to which buying power is held by a relatively small percentage of the total number of buyers in the market.
Cannibalisation
That portion of the demand for a new product that comes from decreasing the demand for (sales of) a current product
the firm markets.
Capacity planning
A forward-looking activity that checks the skill sets
and effective resource capacity of the organization. For product development, the objective is to manage the flow of projects through development such that none of the functions (skill sets) creates a bottleneck to completion on time. It is necessary in optimizing the project portfolio.
Centre of Excellence
A geographic or organizational group with a recognized technical, business, or competitive competency.
Centre of Excellence
A geographic or organizational group with a recognized technical, business, or competitive competency.
Champion
A person who takes a passionate interest in seeing that a particular process or product is fully developed and marketed. This informal role varies from situation to situation. In some situtations, it calls for little more than making the firm aware of the opportunity. In extreme cases, the champion must force a project past strongly entrenched internal resistance of either company policy or powerful objecting parties.
Charter
A project team document defining the context, specific details, and plans of a project. It includes the first business case, problem and goal statements, constraints and assumptions, and the preliminary plan and scope. Periodic reviews with the sponsor ensure alignment with business strategies
Checklist
A list of items used to remind an analyst to think of all relevant considerations. It is frequently used as a tool of creativity in concept generation, as a consideration list in concept screening, and to ensure that all suitable tasks have been completed in any stage of the product development process.
Chunks
The building blocks of product architecture. They are made up of inseparable physical basic units. Also known as modules or major subassemblies.
Clockspeed
The evolution rate of different industries. High clockspeed industries, like electronics, see multiple generations of products within short time periods, perhaps even within 12 months. In low clockspeed industries, like the chemical industry, a generation of products may last as long as 5 or even 10 years. High clockspeed industries may be used to understand the dynamics of change that will in the long run affect all industries.. This is similar to the use of fruit flies, because of their short life spans, to understand the dynamics of genetic change in a speeded-up genetic environment.
Cognitive modelling
A method for producing a computational model for how individuals solve problems and perform tasks that is based on psychological principles. The modeling process outlines the steps a person goes through in solving a particular problem or completing a task by allowing one to predict how long it will take or the types of errors an individual may make. Are frequently used to discover ways to improve a user interface in order to minimize interaction errors or time by anticipating user behavior.
Once a model of the steps or tasks a person must go through to complete a task is constructed, an expert can role play the part of a user to cognitively “walk through” the user’s expected experience. Results from this walkthrough can help make human- product interfaces more intuitive and increase product usability.
Cognitive walkthrough
Collaborative product development
When two firms work together to develop and commercialize a specialized product.
Colocation
Physically locating project personnel in one area, enabling more rapid and frequent decision making and communication among them.
Commercialization
The process of taking a new product from development to market. It may include production launch and ramp-up, marketing materials and program development, supply chain development, sales channel development, training development, training, and service and support development
Competitive intelligence
Methods and activities for transforming disaggregated public competitor information into relevant and strategic knowledge about competitors’ position, size, efforts, and trends. The term refers to the broad practice of collecting, analyzing, and communicating the best available information on competitive trends occurring outside one’s own company.
Computer Aided Engineering
Using computers in designing, analyzing, and manufacturing a product or process. Sometimes refers more narrowly to using computers at just the engineering analysis stage.
Computer Aided Engineering
Using computers in designing, analyzing, and manufacturing a product or process. Sometimes refers more narrowly to using computers at just the engineering analysis stage.
Computer Enhanced Creativity
Using specially designed computer software that aids the process of recording, recalling, and restoring ideas to speed up new product development
Concept
A clearly written and possibly visual description of the new product idea that includes its primary features and consumer benefits, combined with a broad understanding of the technology needed.
Concept generation
The processes by which new concepts or product ideas are generated. Sometimes called idea generation or ideation.
Concept Optimization
A research approach that evaluates how specific product benefits or features contribute to a concept’s overall appeal to consumers. Results are used to select those benefits and features that produce the most appealing concept from the consumer’s perspective.
Concept Statement
A verbal or pictorial statement of a concept that is prepared for presentation to consumers to get their reaction before development.
Concept Study Activity
The set of product development tasks in which a concept is examined to determine if there are large unknowns about the market, the technology, or the production process.
Concept Testing
The process by which a concept statement is presented to consumers for their reactions. These reactions can be used either to let the developer estimate the sales value of the concept or to make changes to the concept to improve its potential sales value.
Concurrency
Carrying out separate activities of the product development process at the same time rather than sequentially
Concurrent Engineering (CE)
When product design and manufacturing
process development occur concurrently in an integrated fashion, using a cross-functional team, rather than sequentially by separate functions. CE is intended to cause the development team to consider all elements of the product life cycle from conception through disposal, including quality, cost, and maintenance, from the project’s outset. Also called simultaneous engineering.
Conjoint Analysis
Aquantitativemarketresearchtechniquethatdiscovers how consumers make trade-offs between a few different features or benefits.
Consumers
The most generic and all-encompassing term for a firm’s targets. The term is used in either the business-to-business or household context and may refer to the firm’s current customers, competitors’ customers, or current nonpurchasers with similar needs or demographic characteristics. The term does not distinguish between whether the person is a buyer or a user target. Only a fraction of consumers will become customers.
Consumer market
The buying of goods and services by individuals and for household use (rather than for use in business settings). Consumer purchases are generally made by individual decision makers, either for themselves or for others in the family.
Consumer Need
A problem the consumer would like to have solved. What a consumer would like a product to do.
Consumer Panel
Specially recruited groups of consumers whose longitudinal category purchases are recorded via the scanner systems at stores.
Contextual inquiry
Amarketresearchmethodthatusesacombinationof techniques from anthropology and journalism. It is a customer needs discovery process that observes and interviews users of products in their environment.
Contingency plan
A plan to cope with events whose occurrence, timing, and severity cannot be predicted.
Continuous improvement (Kaizen)
The review, analysis, and rework directed at incrementally improving practices and processes.
Continuous innovation
A product change that allows improved performance and benefits without changing either consumption patterns or behavior. The product’s general appearance and basic
performance do not functionally change.
Continuous learning Activity
The set of activities involving an objective
examination of how a product development project is progressing or how it was carried out. Its purpose is to allow process changes that simplify its remaining steps or improve the product being developed or its schedule.
Learning Organisation
An organization that continuously tests, updates, and transforms the experience of those in the organization into improved work processes and knowledge that is accessible to the whole organization and relevant to its core purpose.
Controlled Score Testing
A method of test marketing where specialized companies are employed to handle product distribution and auditing rather than using the company’s normal sales force.
Convergent thinking
A technique used late in the early phase of idea generation. It helps reduce the high volume of ideas created through divergent thinking to a small group of ideas or a single idea on which more effort and analysis will be focused.
Coordination Matrix
A summary chart that identifies the key stages of a development project, the goals and key activities within each stage, and who (what function) is responsible for each.
Core Benefit Proposition
The central benefit or purpose for which a consumer buys a product. It may come either from the physical good or service or from augmented dimensions of the product. See also Value Proposition.
Value Proposition
A short, clear, simple statement of how and on what dimensions a product concept will deliver value to prospective customers. The essence of value is embedded in the trade-off between the benefits a customer receives from a new product and the price the customer pays for it.
Core Competence
A competence that a company does better than other firms. This competence provides a distinct competitive advantage and contributes to gaining and keeping customers.
Corporate Culture
The “feel” of an organization. Culture arises from the belief system through which an organization operates. are variously described as being authoritative, bureaucratic, and entrepreneurial. Corporate culture often impacts the firm’s ability for getting things done.
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS or CGS)
The direct costs (labor and materials) associated with producing a product and delivering it to the marketplace.
Creativity
An arbitrary harmony, an expected astonishment, a habitual revelation, a familiar surprise, a generous selfishness, an unexpected certainty, a formable stubbornness, a vital triviality, a disciplined freedom, an intoxicating steadiness, a repeated initiation, a difficult delight, a predictable gamble, an ephemeral solidity, a unifying difference, a demanding satisfier, a miraculous expectation, and accustomed amazement”
The ability to produce work that is both novel and appropriate.
Criteria
Statements of standards used by decision makers at decision gates. They define the dimensions of performance necessary to achieve or surpass for product development projects to continue in development. In total, these reflect a business unit’s new product strategy.
Critical Assumption
An explicit or implicit assumption in the new product business case that, if wrong, could undermine the viability of the opportunity.
Critical Path
The set of interrelated activities that must be completed for the project to be finished successfully. Mapped onto a chart showing how long each task takes and which tasks cannot be started before other tasks are completed, it is the set of linkages through the chart representing the longest necessary path. It determines how long a project will take.
Critical Path Scheduling
A project management technique, often incorporated into various software programs, that puts all important steps of a given new product project into a sequential network based on task interdependencies.
Critical success factors
Those critical few factors that are necessary for, but don’t guarantee, commercial success.
Cross-Functional Team
A team consisting of representatives from the various functions involved in product development, usually including members from all key functions required to deliver a successful product, and typically including marketing, engineering, manufacturing/operations, finance, purchasing, customer support, and quality. The team is empowered by the departments to represent each function’s perspective in the development process.
Crossing the Chasm
Making the transition to a mainstream market from an early market dominated by a few visionary customers (sometimes also called innovators or lead adopters). This concept typically applies to adopting new market-creating, technology-based products and services.
Customer Based Success
The extent to which a new product is accepted
by customers and the trade.
Customer perceived value
The result of the customer’s evaluation of all the benefits and costs of an offering compared to that customer’s perceived alternative. It is the basis on which customers decide to buy.
Customer Site Visits
A qualitative market research technique for uncovering customer needs. It involves going to a customer’s work site and watching a person perform functions associated with the customer needs that the firm wants to fulfill. Then that person is debriefed about what he or she did, why those things were done, the problems encountered while trying to perform the function, and what worked well.
Customer Value Added Ratio
The ratio of worth what paid for (WWPF) for the company’s products to WWPF for the competitors’ products. A ratio above 1 indicates superior value compared to the competitors
Cycle Time
The length of time for any operation from start to completion. In terms of new product development, it is the time required to develop a new product from the early initial idea to initial market sales. Precise definitions of the start and end points vary from one company to another and may vary from one project to another within the company.
