Front End of Innovation

Abstract

The front end of innovation or what has often been referred to as the fuzzy front end is the first part of the innovation process. Considerable research has been published in both academic and practitioner journals on the new‐product development process, which occurs after the front end. In contrast, much less research has focused on the front end. We discuss nascent empirical studies and put them in an exploitation and exploration framework. Exploitation refers to a more incremental development, while exploration refers to a more radical development. Exploitation practices follow a well‐practiced routine, which is typically thought of as consisting of three activities: discovery, scoping, and building a business case. In this article, we propose a more holistic model and include the companies' organizational resources (i.e., strategy, vision, and climate) as antecedent to the front‐end activities. Empirical studies concentrating on exploitative front activities mostly have converging findings, although the necessity of having a well‐conceived business plan is not per se confirmed in more recent studies. Practices in the front end for exploration projects are significantly different from those for exploitation projects due to the large amount of market and/or technology uncertainty. An understanding of how to manage the front end for exploration projects is just beginning to emerge. As such, we have provided a review of the relevant studies and have woven them into a model that uses a more iterative process than that used to explain exploitation projects.

Innovation and Strategy

“…The first phase, front-end innovation (or what has also been referred to the "fuzzy front-end") consists of opportunity recognition, idea generation, concept definition, testing, and evaluation (Koen & Bertels, 2011). This requires harnessing the voice of the customer to gain a deep understanding of user problems and requirements and uncover meaningful ideas that can serve as the basis for potential solutions (Bharadwaj, Nevin, & Wallman, 2012;Crawford & Di Benedetto, 2008;Griffin & Hauser, 1993).…”

Sustainable Product Innovation: The Importance of the Front- End Stage in the Innovation Process

“…Koen et al [10] were the first to use the term Front End of Innovation in 2002, with the purpose of replacing the "Fuzzy Front End". The reasoning behind the wish to abandon the term Fuzzy Front End is that the word ''fuzzy'' implies that the Front End is mysterious, lacks accountability, and cannot be critically evaluated [15]. In this book chapter, we will refer to these early stages as the Front End of Innovation (FEI).…”

“…She suggests that a better understanding of the FEI, leads to a higher success rate in the overall new product development process. Koen and Bertels [15] highlight the importance of the path-dependency in an innovation process; the front end is very important because the product-development process is path dependent. This means that choices made in the front end lead to options as well as limitations regarding which products a company will ultimately be able to develop [15].…”

“…Though all innovation processes does not follow a single pattern, the FE phase is intrinsically non-routine, dynamic and uncertain [7]. Essentially, the front end requires more expansive and divergent thinking [15]. The ambiguity level at the end of the FE can affect the risk related to the identified idea in the development stage [7].…”