Discussion and concluding remarks
There are many explanations for the failure of new products. Some explanations relate to problems in the front-end activities of NPD. Complex information may be inadequately processed (Khurana and Rosenthal 1997), decisions may be taken on an ad hoc basis (Montoya-Weiss and O'Driscoll 2000), and/or conflicting organizational pressures may create unmanageable complexity and uncertainty (Chang et al. 2007). In explaining these problem areas, this article helps managers and their teams identify the factors that contribute to the success of front-end activities in NPD.
This article uses a review of the literature on the front end in NPD as the inspiration for the creation of a front-end conceptual framework. The framework is built on two groups of success factors for front-end activities identified in the literature: foundational success factors and project-specific success factors. The framework also highlights the interplay between these success factors that is relevant for firms working with new product ideas and concepts, regardless of firm size.
By visualizing these success factor groups in a conceptual framework, we provide firms and their managers with an analytical tool useful for working with front-end activities in NPD. In tabular and textual presentations, we list the success factors, ask key questions related to these factors, and describe the ideal condition/situation action responses. Product managers and their teams can use our conceptual framework to identify the front-end success factors and thereby better deal with this early stage of NPD. Use of the framework can reduce development time and mitigate the problems associated with rework in front-end activities that are characterized by great complexity and uncertainty.
