Approaches to the "Fuzzy Front End"of Innovation

In new product development (NPD) unacceptably high failure rates have often been related to insufficiencies during the early development phases. Nevertheless, only little effort is devoted to the early phases, in theory as well as in practice, and managers often indicate the front end as being one of the greatest weaknesses in product innovation. Therefore, it is surprising that only little research has treated the so called "fuzzy front end" of innovation. In this paper we discuss if process models lead to success in the early development phases. Therefore, the discussion about process models for the whole...