OPPORTUNITY IDENTIFICATION AND IDEA GENERATION: THE FUZZY FRONT END

2014 ◽  
pp. 82-115
Keyword(s):  
Idea Generation ◽  
Opportunity Identification ◽  
Fuzzy Front End ◽  
Front End

scholarly journals The Artist as Innovation Muse: Findings from a Residence Program in the Fuzzy Front End

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 88
Author(s):  
Berit Sandberg
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
Transmission Model ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Fuzzy Front End ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Front End ◽  
Scientists And Engineers ◽  
The Impact

In a highly competitive business environment, integrating artists into corporate research and development (R&D) seems to be a promising way to foster inventiveness and idea generation. Given the importance of individual level innovation for product development, this study explores the benefits that employees experience from the artist-in-residence-program at Robert Bosch GmbH, Germany. Qualitative content analysis of interviews with scientists and engineers was performed in order to explore the impact of their encounters with artists in the theoretical framework of the triadic concept and transmission model of inspiration. The findings corroborate the notion that inspiration is a suitable theoretical underpinning for individual benefits of art–science collaborations in the front end of innovation. Scientists and engineers are inspired by the artists’ otherness and transcend their usual modes of perception in favor of enhanced focal, peripheral and bifocal vision. Whereas shifts in perspective are reflected in individual thinking patterns, researchers are hardly motivated to change their work-related behavior. The exchange with artists does not have a concrete impact on technological innovation, because researchers neither integrate impulses into their experiential world nor link them to fields of activity. In the case under scrutiny, artistic impulses do not contribute to idea generation in the sense of front-end activities. The study contributes to research on artists in businesses by illuminating the R&D environment as a hitherto neglected field of activity. While substantiating previous research on artist-in-science-residencies, the results suggest that the potential of such interdisciplinary endeavors is limited.

scholarly journals "FUZZY FRONT END" PRACTICES IN INNOVATING JAPANESE COMPANIES

2006 ◽  
Vol 03 (01) ◽  
pp. 43-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
CORNELIUS HERSTATT ◽  
CHRISTOPH STOCKSTROM ◽  
BIRGIT VERWORN ◽  
AKIO NAGAHIRA
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
New Product ◽  
Market Uncertainty ◽  
Upper Management ◽  
Fuzzy Front End ◽  
Front End ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
Technical Specifications ◽  
Japanese Companies

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 the 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 be intensively involved in upper management and customers on 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.

Risky Business: The Driving Factors of Creative Risk Taking Attitudes in Engineering Design Industry

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuan Zheng ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Driving Factors ◽  
Years Of Experience ◽  
Great Cost ◽  
Fuzzy Front End ◽  
Front End

Designing breakthrough products comes at a great cost to the design industry due to the risk and uncertainties associated with creative ideas. However, without creative ideas, there is no potential for innovation. As such, companies need to appropriately embrace the risk associated with creative concepts in the fuzzy front end of the design process in order to build their value. While previous research has linked risk taking attitudes to creative idea generation and selection in engineering design education, there has been limited research focused on engineering design professionals’ creative risk taking attitude and the corresponding driving factors. This is problematic because without this knowledge we do not know what factors inhibit or promote the flow of creative ideas in engineering design industry. In order to address this gap, a preliminary online survey was conducted with 46 design professionals from a global manufacturing company to understand the potential driving factors of creative risk taking, including educational training, job type (R&D, applied engineering, or management), and years of experience. The results suggest that there is a relationship between employee education level and years of experience and an engineering employee’s willingness to take risks on creative ideas in the fuzzy front end of the design process. Interestingly, the results also show that those individuals primarily responsible for the development (R&D) and selection (management) of creative ideas tend to be more financially risk averse than individuals in traditional engineering positions. These results contribute to the prediction of professionals’ design behaviors and have implications for the management of creative ideas in the early conceptual design stages of engineering design industry.

scholarly journals Fuzzy Decision Support in the Early Phases of the Fuzzy Front End of Innovation in Product Development

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofiane Achiche ◽  
Francesco Paolo Appio
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support ◽  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Fuzzy Decision ◽  
Opportunity Identification ◽  
Fuzzy Front End ◽  
Front End ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Learning Data

The innovation process may be divided into three areas: the fuzzy front end (FFE), the new product development (NPD) process, and commercialization. Every NPD process has a FFE in which products and projects are defined. Companies tend to begin the stages of FFE without a clear definition and analysis of the process to go from opportunity identification to concepts, and often they even abort the process or start over. Koen’s Model for the FFE is composed of 5 different phases, the first two being Opportunity Identification and Opportunity Analysis, which are the focus of this paper. Furthermore, several tools can be used by designers/managers in order to improve, structure and organize their work during the FFE. However, these tools tend to be selected and used in a heuristic manner. Additionally, some tools are preferred and more effective during specific phases of the FFE; hence an economic evaluation of the cost of their usage is very critical and there is also a need to characterize them in terms of their influence on the FFE. This paper focuses on decision support for managers/designers in their process of assessing the cost of choosing/using tools in the core front end activities, namely Opportunity Identification and Opportunity Analysis. This is achieved by analyzing the Influencing Factors (Firm context, Industry context, Macro environment) along with data collection from managers followed by the automatic construction of fuzzy decision support models (FDSM) of the discovered relationships. The decision support focuses upon the estimate investment needed for the use of tools during the 2 phases cited above. The generation of FDSMs is carried out automatically using a specialized genetic algorithm applied to learning data obtained from 5 experienced managers from 5 different companies. The automatically constructed FDSMs accurately reproduced the managers’ estimations using the learning data sets and were very robust when validated with hidden data sets.

scholarly journals A FUZZY FRONT-END PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK FOR START-UPS

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 111-120
Author(s):  
Nuno Miguel Martins Pacheco ◽  
Anand Vazhapilli Sureshbabu ◽  
Masaru Charles Nürnberger ◽  
Laura Isabel Durán Noy ◽  
Markus Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Fuzzy Front End ◽  
Development Framework ◽  
Front End ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Extended Approach ◽  
Role Based ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Clear Idea ◽  
Start Ups

AbstractStart-ups tend to form with a central idea that differentiates them from their competitors in the market. It is crucial for them to efficiently transform the idea into a marketable product. Prototyping helps to iteratively achieve a minimum viable product and plays a crucial role by enabling teams to test their ideas with limited resources early on. However, the prototyping process may have wrong focus leading to a suboptimal allocation of resources. Previously, we proposed role-based prototyping for fuzzy front-end development in small teams. It supports (1) resource allocation, (2) the definition of responsibilities, and (3) structuring the development process with milestones. In recent research this was a promising yet incomplete approach. We extend the previous work by refining the prototyping process by adding a prototyping matrix with two dimensions (purpose and lens), a prototyping cycle (plan, execute, test, reflect, assimilate), and a modified Kanban board (Protoban) for planning, managing, and reflecting cycles. This process, named PETRA was tested with a start-up developing an autonomous trash picking robot. The extended approach supported the team significantly in providing a clear idea of what to do at what time.

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