Measurement of design front end - Radical innovation approach

The overall structure and the main characteristics of the future product are all decided in the front-end phase, which then strongly affects subsequent new product development activities. Recent studies indicate that these early front-end activities represent the most troublesome phase of the innovation process, and at the same time one of the greatest opportunities to improve the overall innovation capability of a company. In this paper dealing with the criteria we concentrate only for the objectives viewpoint and leave the attributes discussion to the future research. Two most crucial questions are: • What are the objectives of measurement in radical design? and • What are the most crucial future challenges related with the selection of the relevant measurement objectives? Based on the theoretical part of this paper, our framework of the Balanced Design Front-End Model (BDFEM) for measuring the innovation activities front end contains five assessment viewpoints as follows; input, process, output (including impacts), social environment and structural environment. Based on the results from our first managerial implications in three Finnish manufacturing companies we argue, that the developed model is flexible and can also be applied extensively to other purposes than manufacturing companies, like service sector, as well.