New Product Development Process (NPDP): updating the identification stage practices

摘要

This survey focuses on the early stages of the new product development process. More precisely, it is mostly concerned with the definition of the basic initial concepts required to initiate the design tasks within an innovative project,, The article presents an original systemic approach that enables the identification of technological opportunity within all potential markets. The method is consistent with technological strategies that aim to improve the effective use of company knowledge, to reduce time development and to master innovation costs. This article will mostly develop the opportunity step, based on an original descriptive model of needs. Moreover, authors present an experiment involving a panel of six firms aiming at the validation of the descriptive model and an improvement of the approach.