1816043 | Rahul Pandey |PGPEM

Individual Assignment 6- 11-oct-2019

 Front-end activities are where firms create new ideas, give them direction, and set them in
motion.
 Front end activities though very crucial for the success of new product, often take place in in
informal manner in ill-defined ways characterized by ad-hoc decision making with high degrees
of complexity. The activities also face cross roads with complex information processing, tactic
knowledge and conflicting organizational pressures.
 The current ecosystem is ineffective in front end management due to –
o No consensus in the available literature for key activities and outcome.
o Available success factors do not provide clarity on comprehensive account of front end.
o Common pitfalls & counter measures seem to not address the difference between –
incremental and radical.
o Literature has not accounted for the open innovation for its outbound dimensions.
 The framework defines the fundamentals to developing corroborated product definition as a
process rather than single activity, involves depicting the key activities that firms can explore to
get the outcome of front end.
 I/C Development – It involves two activities that acts as opposite force, I/C refinement gives
key technical developments and thus shall have creativity and experimentation. While I/C
screening is important to analyze both false positives and false negatives. This is core stage and
tween shall focus on product viability and significance at this stage.
 I/C alignment – It involves alignment between I/C and firm’s external environment and firm’s
internal environment. One popular concept is describes the firm’s capability on external
knowledge exploitation. A risk matrix defines the different types of risks involved in I?C
alignment, in a 2X2 matrix of High /low internal alignment and High/low External alignment.
 I/C Legitimization – this stage focuses on socio political factors that affect the product front
end activities. There could be 2 major problems at this stage – risk of rejection/ignorance due
to legitimization and push of bad ideas by powerful individuals internally. But could be resolved
by assigning the activities to product champions.
 Radical front end developments are new to both firm and market, as well as involve extreme
technological uncertainty, which leads to linking tech capabilities to market needs. Front end
may need to be more experimental than customer driven.
 Incremental innovations are more of current platform and technology enhancements which
lead to value addition for customers.
 The article also cautions us about the limitations of the framework as it is focused on
assembled products.
 For non- assembled products front end phase may deviate significantly depending on key
activities.
 Front – end for service development represents another idiosyncratic context.
 The framework therefore need adjustments regarding both product and industry effects, that
managers must interpret the results carefully and draw their own conclusions by self-analogy.

From Preliminary ideas to corroborated product definitions