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Innovation and Product Development

  • The success of a business depends on its ability to identify the unmet needs of consumers and to develop products that meet those needs at a reasonable cost.
  • Accomplishing these goals requires a collaborative effort by individuals from all areas of the organization: operations management (including representatives from engineering, design, and manufacturing), marketing, accounting, and finance.
  • Representatives from these various functional areas often work together as project teams throughout the product development process, which consists of a series of activities that transform a product idea into a final product.
  • This process can be broken down into seven steps:

  1. Evaluate opportunities and select the best product mix
  2. Get feedback to refine the product concept that describes what the product might look like and how it might work
  3. Make sure that the product performs and appeals to consumers
  4. Design with manufacturing in mind to build both quality and efficiency into the manufacturing process
  5. Build and test prototypes, or physical models of the product
  6. Run market tests and enter the ramp-up stage during which employees are trained in the production process
  7. Launch the product