In recent years, new product development(NPD) has become more important factor in the consumer electronics industry. Specially, the lead time of NPD and effective implementation of the new product concept development stage have come into spotlight.
This thesis is an exploratory study on the information utilization patterns along project types at the new product concept development stage focusing on cases of the consumer electronics industry.
The purpose of this thesis primarily focused on three research questions as follows:
1) How can NPD projects be classified according to strategic purpose in their businesses and what is the effective stage of new product concept development ?
2) What kinds of information was used in this stage ?
3) Are there any patterns in the information utilization ?
Based on the related literature and industry observation, research framework was generated. Also 4 cases of NPD projects were analyzed along the new product concept development stage of one large firm.
The results show that three main findings. First, there are 2 types of NPD projects, innovation project and improvement project. Also 5 steps of the new product concept developmen stage for new product concept development was effective implementation.
Second, there were 5 types of information, market information, technology information, competition information, macro environment information, and consumer information. the information was evaluated by a relative importance according to the strategic purposes in a corporate or business level
Third, The information utilization patterns according to the project types were found in case studies. There were 2 types of utilization patterns. The one is that the innovation project focus on technology and market information, the other is that the improvement project focus on competition and consumer information.
Finally, this thesis suggest that these factors were important to reduce the lead time of NPD, implement the new product concept development stage effectively and achieve the good quality.
