New Product Development (NPD)

It often takes very long for a new product to be developed, evaluated, tested, manufactured and marketed. New product development (NPD), therefore, is about transformation of market opportunity into a new product. It is regarded as the part of research and development where research is defined as scholarly and scientific investigation which can be either basic or applied and development is also known as experimental development that involves systematic but non-routine technical work.

Hence, new product development (NPD) covers the complete process of bringing a new product to market. However, successful product and service development is much more than application of tools and techniques and requires appropriate organisation to support innovation and explicit process to manage development.

With this, companies need to reach out to future by developing new products that will enable them to compete with rivals over decades. Therefore, a central aspect of NPD is product design, along with various business considerations. For many, new products are just outputs of innovation process but the process of NPD is the sub process of innovation. Also, the actual development of new products is the transformation of business opportunity into tangible product.

NPD requires an understanding of customer needs and wants, the competitive environment, and the nature of the market. Aiming at cost, time and quality, companies develop continuous practices and strategies to better satisfy customer requirements and to increase their own market share by a regular development of new products.

Questions on New product development (NPD)

Question: New product development is a key activity for most firms and the traditional linear or stage-gate view has been joined in the past few decades by one termed simultaneous engineering. Critically assess the differences between both approaches and also examine the types of situations when each is most suitable.

Question: New product development has recently been transformed from the linear, stage-gate process to one often termed simultaneous engineering. Exactly how do these differ, and are there any instances to which the stage-gate approach is most suited?

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