Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/55477 
Year of Publication: 
2004
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 25
Publisher: 
Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), Institute for Technology and Innovation Management (TIM), Hamburg
Abstract: 
In this paper, we report on the results of a large-scale study about typical front-end-related innovation practices in 553 Japanese mechanical and electrical engineering companies. We explore typical activities concerning the generation and assessment of new product ideas, the reduction of technological as well as market uncertainty and front end planning. Finally, we report on differences between successful and unsuccessful companies. Our study confirms earlier findings about the frequent use of creativity techniques in Japan during the process of idea generation. We also find companies to intensively involve upper management and customers into NPD projects. While integrating upper management is of vital importance for assessing new product ideas, integrating customers and users is primarily used to developing product ideas and concepts. We further find evidence that successful companies integrate their customers more frequently in the process of developing and assessing new product ideas than non successful companies. In addition, the former integrate customer requirements into their product definitions more often and also translate these requirements into technical specifications more frequently than non-successful companies. Finally, successful companies more often systematically plan a project prior to its start than unsuccessful ones.
Subjects: 
New product development
Japanese firms
planning
success innovation
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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