Design Thinking for Long-Term Product Planning

Abstract

Product planning is the foremost and an integral part of the new product development (NPD) process today. The primary role of the product planning function is to define and conceptualize the “right” product—right for the customers, right for the business, right for all the key stakeholders, and right for the environment. The product planning process involves understanding the customer needs through market research, translating those needs into product specifications, and creating a positive business case for the new product. However, with the rapidly changing market scenario, intense competition, the advent of new technologies, and regulatory trends, the conventional product planning process does not always lead to the expected business output. Product planners must get the new product definition right in the first attempt itself. Engineers in the research and development (R and D) function use this product definition to evaluate the feasibility of the design and develop real products. It is, therefore, evident that the margin for error in the product planning process is zero. Design thinking is a human-centered problem-solving approach that can solve a social, economic, environmental, or business problem and uncover high opportunity areas. Using a case study of a leading Indian automotive and construction equipment original equipment manufacturer (OEM), this paper demonstrates how design thinking enabled an organization to conceptualize a new category-creating product that captured significant market share in just two years of launch and how the organization developed it in less than three years. This paper illustrates the potential of the design thinking process for new product development and discusses the possibilities of scaling it to different sectors. The paper also explains the critical roles of a designer in this process when working in a cross-functional team.