From ideation towards innovation: pillars of front-end in new product development

Abstract

Companies need to deliver innovative new products in order to compete in the global market successfully. Customer preferences as well technologies are highly dynamic that continuous ideation is required in the fuzzy Front End of product development, where suitable ideas have to be selected to initiate object innovation. The fuzzy Front End is mainly unorganized in companies, and there is a lack of a consistent taxonomy in the literature covering all aspects in the fuzzy Front End for successful product innovation. Consequently a model describing the pillars of the fuzzy Front End with respect to object innovation is synthesized here based on evidence from the industry supported by a systematic literature review, which shall support practitioners and researchers in the successful evaluation of innovation ideas.