Industrial Market Research and its Application to Technical New Product Developments

摘要

Many readers of Materials Australia would be involved, either directly or indirectly, in R&D work or in commercialising the outcomes of local or overseas R&D. Such readers would also be well aware of the quickening pace of technology changes, which, combined with the impacts of globalising trade patterns, are tending to shorten the life spans of many industrial products and processes. In Australia, these pressures are highlighting the need for effective commercialising of R&D outcomes for local organisations to stay competitive in their marketplaces. "Innovation" is now perceived to be a complete management process which takes an "invention" (a new discovery, idea or way of doing things) through several stages to become an eventual commercial outcome as "a new product", with "product" being tangible and/or intangible. This process of New Product Development (NPD) has now become a discipline in itself, 1, 2. NPD used to be seen mainly as a linear, sequential, logical process leading from, for example, original concept to R&D to Tooling/Manufacturing, thence to market. Nowadays, NPD is seen much more in interactive, intuitive and concurrent terms, with more use of multi-disciplinary teams rather than the specialist silo departments of the past. Irrespective of whatever model of NPD is followed, management will need various types of market information at one or several stages, hence the use of market research services during NPD.