Understanding the failure to understand New Product Development failures: Mitigating the uncertainty associated with innovating new products by combining scenario planning and forecasting

摘要

In this paper we show that New Product Development (NPD) is subject to fundamental uncertainty that is bothudepistemic and ontic in nature. We argue that this uncertainty cannot be mitigated using forecasting techniquesudexclusively, because these are most useful in circumstances characteristic of probabilistic risk, as distinct fromudnon-probabilistic uncertainty. We show that the mitigation of uncertainty in relation to NPD requires techniquesudable to take account of the socio-economic factors that can combine to cause present assumptions about futureuddemand conditions to be incorrect. This can be achieved through an Intuitive Logics (IL) scenario planningudprocess designed specifically to mitigate uncertainty associated with NPD by incorporating insights from bothudquantitative modelling alongside consideration of political, social, technological and legal factors, as-well-asudstakeholder motivations that are central to successful NPD. In this paper we therefore achieve three objectives:ud1) identify the aspects of the current IL process salient to mitigating the uncertainty of NPD; 2) show howudadvances in diffusion modelling can be used to identify the social-network and contagion effects that lead to audproduct's full diffusion; and 3) show how the IL process can be further enhanced to facilitate detailed considerationudof the factors enabling and inhibiting initial market-acceptance, and then the forecasted full diffusion of a consideredudnew product. We provide a step-by-step guide to the implementation of this adapted IL scenario planning processuddesigned specifically to mitigate uncertainty in relation to NPD