IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/ijitmx/v03y2006i01ns0219877006000703.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

"Fuzzy Front End" Practices In Innovating Japanese Companies

Author

Listed:
  • CORNELIUS HERSTATT

    (Institute for Technology and Innovation Management, Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, Schwarzenbergstr. 95, Hamburg, 21073, Germany)

  • CHRISTOPH STOCKSTROM

    (Institute for Technology and Innovation Management, Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, Schwarzenbergstr. 95, Hamburg, 21073, Germany)

  • BIRGIT VERWORN

    (Chair of Organization Science and HRM, Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus, Cottbus, 03046, Germany)

  • AKIO NAGAHIRA

    (Management of Science and Technology Department, Tohoku University Graduate School of Engineering, Sendai, 980-8579, Japan)

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 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Cornelius Herstatt & Christoph Stockstrom & Birgit Verworn & Akio Nagahira, 2006. ""Fuzzy Front End" Practices In Innovating Japanese Companies," International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management (IJITM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(01), pages 43-60.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:ijitmx:v:03:y:2006:i:01:n:s0219877006000703
    DOI: 10.1142/S0219877006000703
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219877006000703
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S0219877006000703?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rakhshan Ummar & Sharjeel Saleem, 2020. "Thematic Ideation: A Superior Supplementary Concept in Creativity and Innovation," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(3), pages 21582440209, August.
    2. Sabit Veselaj & Magnus Thor Torfason, 2019. "When To Call The Customer? Timing Of Customer Involvement In The Development Of New Products And Services," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 23(01), pages 1-31, January.
    3. Magdalena Gabriel & Josef-Peter Schöggl & Alfred Posch, 2017. "Early Front-End Innovation Decisions for Self-Organized Industrial Symbiosis Dynamics—A Case Study on Lignin Utilization," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-17, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:ijitmx:v:03:y:2006:i:01:n:s0219877006000703. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/ijitm/ijitm.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.