Introduction

Overview

Product innovation is the overarching management framework for making incremental changes and improvements to products, services, and processes. It includes the conceptualization, design, development, validation, and commercialization of new products for customers and markets in concert with the prevailing conditions and trends. Product innovation involves the creative responses and solutions for meeting the needs and expectations of customers and market(s), the driving forces in the business environment, and the strategic requirements of the organization. Product innovation runs the gamut from improving existing products to discovering entirely new ways of satisfying customers and stakeholders. From an internal perspective, product innovation depends on the knowledge, experience, capabilities, resources, and the prevailing technologies of the organization. From an external perspective, product innovation focuses on customer and stakeholder needs, wants, and expectations. Customers desire excellent products and services with exceptional value, outstanding benefits, high quality, and assured reliability. Meeting such specifications is the exciting challenge of product innovation.

Product innovation is challenging because of the complexities of the business environment, the changing needs of customers and markets, the effects of competition, and the difficulties associated with understanding the present and forecasting the future. However, the complexities of product innovation are simplified in most organizations because there are common pathways to define and describe the processes and methods used for developing new products, and the organization has an information system to support the required analysis and decision making.