Adding creativity to the House of Quality: product innovation versus product development

Abstract

Summary form only given. Could differences in process that depend on the level of innovation help explain the mixed results with the House of Quality? Are product innovation and product development processes really the same? We question this assumption and strive to point out what is unique about the product development process when it addresses a true product innovation. The framework for this research includes a map of four categories of product innovation (radical, application, incremental and technical), based on technological advances combined with increased customer benefits. The framework also includes a generic model of the product innovation process based on four stages (discovery, decision, development and delivery). Then 21 process variables, organized by the four stages, are used to compare the innovation process for each category of innovation. A survey of 116 Pacific Northwest high technology manufacturing firms provides the data base to evaluate this framework, as well as the assertions made by executives in interviews conducted before designing the survey. The executives evaluated their actual product innovations as they determined which types of innovations they produced, the associated success rates, and the underlying product innovation process. The results indicate that application innovations are the most successful (although the nature of success varies with the type of innovation), followed in turn by radical innovations, incremental innovations, and the least successful technical innovations.