A completely self-sufficient project team with very little, if any, link to the funding organization. Frequently used as an organizational model to bring a radical innovation to the marketplace. Sometimes called a "tiger" team.

A person who takes a passionate interest in seeing that a particular process or product is fully developed and marketed.

A team consisting of representatives from the various functions involved in product development, usually including members from all key functions required to deliver a successful product, typically including marketing, engineering, manufacturing/operations, finance, purchasing, customer support, and quality. The team is empowered by the departments to represent each function's perspective in the development process.

An empowered project team with adequate resourcing to complete the project. Personnel report to the team leader and are co-located as practical.

The firm’s positioning for developing New Technologies and Products.

New product team charged with successfully developing a product concept and delivering to the marketplace. Resources are, for the most part, not dedicated and the team depends on the technical functions for resources necessary to get the work accomplished.

The overall process of strategy, organization, concept generation, product and marketing plan creation and evaluation, and commercialization of a New Product. Sometimes referred to only as “Product Development.”

A critical strategic document, the Product Innovation Charter (PIC) is the heart of any organized effort to commercialize a new product. It contains the reasons the project has been started, the goals, objectives, guidelines, and boundaries of the project. It is the "who, what, where, when, and why" of the product development project.

A multifunctional group of individuals chartered to plan and execute a New Product Development project.

A business process by which a business unit decides on the mix of active projects, staffing and dollar budget allocated to each project currently being undertaken.

A graphical multi-step process to forecast future market and/or technology changes, and then plan the products to address these changes.

An informal role in a product development project, usually performed by a higher-ranking person in the firm who is not directly involved in the project but who is ready to extend a helping hand, if needed, or provide a barrier to interference by others.

Balancing the Portfolio of development projects along one or more of many dimensions such as focus vs. diversification, short vs. long term, high vs. low risk, extending platforms vs. development of new platforms.

A product attribute expressed in terms of what the user gets from the product rather than its physical characteristics or features. Benefits are often paired with specific features, but they need not be.

An external test of pre-production products. The purpose is to test the product for all functions in a breadth of field situations to find those system faults that are more likely to show in actual use than in the firm’s more controlled in-house tests before sale to the general market.

One who purchases or uses your firm’s products or services.

A qualitative market research technique for uncovering customer needs. The method involves going to a customer’s work site, watching as a person performs functions associated with the customer needs your firm wants to solve, and then debriefing that person about what they did, why they did those things, the problems encountered as they were trying to perform the function, and what worked well.

Information about the firm’s customers, competitors, or markets. Information may be from secondary sources (already published and publicly available) or primary sources (from customers themselves). Market research may be qualitative in nature, or quantitative.

Research conducted with a very small number of respondents, either in groups or individually, to gain an impression of their beliefs, motivations, perceptions and opinions. Frequently used to gather initial consumer needs and obtain initial reactions to ideas and concepts. Results are not representative of the market in general or projectable. Qualitative marketing research is used to show why people buy a particular product, whereas quantitative marketing research reveals how many people buy it.

A disciplined and defined set of tasks and steps that describe the normal means by which a company repetitively converts embryonic ideas into salable products or services.

A signed document, containing a record of the points on which agreement has been reached between negotiating parties preliminary to a final treaty or contract. The agreement indicates how customer needs will be translated to engineering design parameters.

A firm that follows an imitative innovation strategy, where the goal is to get to market with an equivalent or slightly better product very quickly once someone else opens up the market, rather than to be first to market with new products or technologies. Sometimes called an imitator or a fast follower.

A firm that stakes out a product turf and protects it by whatever means, not necessarily through developing new products.

A firm that leads in technology, product and market development and commercialization, even though an individual product may not lead to profits. Their general goal is to be first to market with any particular innovation.

A firm that has no coherent innovation strategy. They only develop new products when absolutely forced to by the competitive situation.

The messy "getting started" period of product development, when the product concept is still very fuzzy. Preceding the more formal product development process, it generally consists of three tasks: strategic planning, concept generation, and, especially, pre-technical evaluation. These activities are often chaotic, unpredictable, and unstructured. In comparison, the subsequent new product development process is typically structured, predictable, and formal, with prescribed sets of activities, questions to be answered, and decisions to be made.

A firm or organization that is adept at improving existing technologies through incremental innovation in both product and process technologies. Often offers a product or pricing advantage over the first-to-market competitor.

A standard measure of project profitability, this is the discounted profits over the life of the project expressed as a percentage of initial investment.

A good or service that has never before been available to either consumers or producers. The automobile was new-to-the-world when it was introduced, as were microwave ovens and pet rocks.

A group of persons who participate in the new product development project. Frequently each team member represents a function, department, or specialty. Together they represent the full set of capabilities needed to effectively and efficiently complete the project.

The person leading the new product development team. Responsible for ensuring that milestones and deliverables are achieved, but may not have any direct authority over project participants.

The process by which a new product is introduced into the market for initial sale.

A condition in which one team member perceives that another has frustrated, or is about to frustrate, a condition of his. Results due to miscommunication between people with regard to their needs, ideas, beliefs, goals, or values.

Involves acquiring skills related to conflict resolution, self-awareness about conflict modes, communication skills, and establishing norms for managing conflict to increase productivity of the team.

Characterized by high assertiveness and low cooperativeness, competing is a power-oriented approach to dealing with conflict. An individual will assert his or her position without considering opposing viewpoints.

Characterized by high assertiveness and high cooperativeness, collaborating involves attempting to find a solution to satisfy all team members' concerns and fully satisfying both sides of an issue.

Characterized by low assertiveness and low cooperativeness, avoiding involves stalling on an issue or ignoring it. The individual does not satisfy her own concerns or those concerns of other team members.

Characterized by low assertiveness and high cooperativeness, accommodating involves foregoing one's own concerns in order to satisfy the concerns of the other team members.

Characterized by intermediate assertiveness and intermediate cooperativeness, compromising involves finding the middle ground and foregoing some of the individual's concerns in order to satisfy some other concerns of the team.

A group method of creative problem-solving frequently used in product concept generation. There are many modifications in format, each variation with its own name. The basis of all of these methods uses a group of people to creatively generate a list of ideas related to a particular topic. As many ideas as possible are listed before any critical evaluation is performed.

All of those activities and processes that lead to creating broad sets of solutions to consumer problems. These techniques may be used in the early stages of product development to generate initial product concepts, in the intermediate stages for overcoming implementation issues, in the later stages for planning launch and in the post-mortem stage to better understand success and failure in the marketplace.

The scheduled stream of products in development for release to the market.

A technique generally performed late in the initial phase of idea generation to help funnel the high volume of ideas created through divergent thinking into a small group or single idea on which more effort and analysis will be focused.

Technique performed early in the initial phase of idea generation that expands thinking processes to generate, record and recall a high volume of new or interesting ideas.

Involves having persons or firms in the intended market use the new product for some time and report their reactions to it, in order to learn whether it satisfies the market needs identified in the ideation stage of development.

The process by which a concept statement is presented to consumers for their reactions. These reactions can either be used to permit the developer to estimate the sales value of the concept or to make changes to the concept to enhance its potential sales value.

A process for formally acknowledging that someone has mastered a body of knowledge on a subject. In new product development, the PDMA has created and manages a certification process to become a New Product Development Professional (NPDP).