A Proposed Method for Innovation
Chris V. Conley, Illinois Institute of Technology
While there are many helpful tools and techniques for business analysis
and product development, there are few, if any, methods for creating robust
new product concepts. This paper presents a methodology that responds to
some of the common problems associated with how organizations currently
try to develop new concepts. The method combines research and synthesis
in an iterative cycle with a cross disciplinary team to define new product
innovations. Product conceptualization is still considered a black box to many
organizations trying to innovate. There are two primary mistakes made. First,
organizations often think a primary challenge is to choose from the product
ideas and projects that a company already has. The second mistake is to spend
too much time in research, analysis, and specifying features and benefits
without ever making something. The methodology proposed in this paper
is called Integrated Definition and is a means to define new products and
services that can be released into development. Key phases of the process are
1) Understand Context, 2) Create Concepts, 3) Architect Solution Directions,
4) Validate Directions, and 5) Finalize Definitions. Over the last two years, this
method has been used with a series of organizations and has delivered clear
and robustly defined new product or service concepts. A project to gather data
from the organizations who have used this method is in the planning stages.
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