Chapter One
Fuzzy Front End:
Effective Methods, Tools,
and Techniques
Peter A. Koen, Greg M. Ajamian, Scott Boyce,
Allen Clamen, Eden Fisher, Stavros Fountoulakis,
Albert Johnson, Pushpinder Puri,
and Rebecca Seibert
The innovation process may be divided into three areas: the fuzzy front end
(FFE), the new product development (NPD) process, and commercialization,
as indicated in Figure 1-1. The first part-the FFE-is generally regarded as
one of the greatest opportunities for improvement of the overall innovation
process. Many companies have dramatically improved cycle time and efficiency
by implementing a formal Stage-Gate(tm) (Cooper 1993) or PACE(r)
(McGrath and Akiyama 1996) approach for managing projects in the NPD
portion of the innovation process. Attention is increasingly being focused on
the front-end activities that precede this formal and structured process in order
to increase the value, amount, and success probability of high-profit concepts
entering product development and commercialization.
The purpose of this chapter is ... read full excerpt from The PDMA ToolBook for New Product Development ebook
