Project Management in the Fuzzy Front End
In many organizations the pressure on the Product Development Process (PDP) has increased through the demand of greater product varieties and shorter lifecycles. Organizations aim for a structured way of speeding up the Product Development Process while not loosing effective scoping in the identification of market needs. Often they have succeeded using the Stage Gate Process - or a customized version of it. [1] But even though the execution of an idea has increased in efficiency the search and selection of the ideas in the "Fuzzy Front End" of the PDP resembles great complications to the project management. This comes with no surprise since the "Fuzzy Front End" is typically characterized through a high degree of uncertainty and equivocality. [2] However transferring knowledge from the Risk Management tools for decision making under uncertainty can be applied to ease the Project Management in the Fuzzy Front End.
Contents |
Project Management
The "Fuzzy Front End"
The Management of Innovation can be divided roughly into 4 stages:
- Search - Finding opportunities for innovations
- Select - Selecting the ideas to pursuit
- Implement - Development of the product and launching it on the market
- Capture - Capturing value from the innovation
On one hand most of the parameters for the later success or failure are set in the first two stages. On the other hand project managers are reluctant to make fast decisions because these stages are characterized with the highest risk and uncertainty levels of the whole process of innovation. The Search phase involves detecting signals in the environment like e.g. technological opportunities or changing requirements in the market. Here opportunities can be easily overseen. The Select phase the inputs from the Search phase are distilled and very few converted into an innovation concepts. Based on these concepts the whole organizational mechanism can now implement the innovation and capture value. [4]
Hence in Innovation Management the Fuzzy Front End is considered the period between when an opportunity for a new product is first considered until the concept if the innovation enters the formal product development process. In the Fuzzy Front End an assortment of difficultly controllable factors create high uncertainty and risks for decision makers such as the project manager in charge: complex information processing, conflicting organizational pressures, market uncertainties, technology uncertainties, equivocality or reciprocal interdependencies to name a few. <ref/Floren2012>
Project Management of incremental Innovations
The Fuzzy Front End of incremental Innovations
The Stage Gate Process
In development of incremental innovations organizations aim for a very structured way.
Project Management of radical Innovations
The Fuzzy Front End of radical Innovations
Decision Making under Uncertainty
Forecasting Innovations
Risk Assessment
Decision Making
References
- ↑ Tidd, J. & Bessant, J. (2013). Managing Innovation - Integrating Technological, Market and Organizational Change, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 5th Edition, p.405-412, UK, ISBN 978118360637
- ↑ Florén, H. & Frishammar, J. (2012). From Preliminary Ideas to Corroborated Product Definitions: Managing the front-end of new product development, California Management Review, 54 (4), p.20-43
- ↑ Wikipedia. Fuzzy Front End. Retrieved 11.09.2016
- ↑ Tidd, J. & Bessant, J. (2013). Managing Innovation - Integrating Technological, Market and Organizational Change, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 5th Edition, p.88-96, UK, ISBN 978118360637
