Accidental Discovery: (1) Finding something good or useful without looking for it; could also be called “Serendipity.” (2) Innovation as a by-product of research and development in a random field.
Adaptable Products: (1) Products that are able to adapt themselves to new environments, new states, or new user defined tasks. (2) The characteristic of a product that lends its usefulness to a variety of tasks.
Adoption Curve: (1) A bell-shaped curve that arranges innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards in reference to marketing. (2) A model that classifies adopters of innovations into various categories, based on the idea that certain individuals are inevitably more open to adaptation than others.
Affinity Charting: Involves each member of a group writing their ideas about a subject, then all of the ideas being clustered together under appropriate heading. Helps groups understand each others’ qualitative data and opinions to come up with a consensus view on the subject on hand.
Alliance: An agreement between two entities, (for example, two companies), motivated by mutual gain such as cost reduction and improved service for the customer.
Alpha Test: (1) The first test of newly developed hardware of software in a laboratory setting. (2) Testing by either potential customers, or an independent test team at the developers’ site.
Analogical Thinking: Using the solutions from similar problems as reference to solve a current problem; taking ideas from one context and applying them to another context to produce a new idea.
Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP): A structured technique which helps organize complex decisions in order to find to best solution for the goal, it is useful for group decision making and long term goals. There are three main elements: the goal, criteria, and alternatives. Top in the hierarchy is the goal, given a value of 1, and it is broken down into criteria, then subcriteria, and so on per necessity. The criteria are given a numerical value that is weighted by importance. The alternatives are the “answers” to the decision and can be ranked by their numerical value given by how they interact with the criteria.
Analyzer: A device or person that performs an analysis.
Ansoff Matrix (Product/Process Matrix): A tool that helps businesses decide their product and market growth strategy.
Anticipatory Failure Determination (AFD): A method of failure prediction or failure analysis which intentionally seeks to find all of the ways a system can fail. For failure analysis, one looks to intentionally create the failure that occurred. For failure prediction, one looks to intentionally create all possible failures. This method transforms a low knowledge area, “how did this/can this fail?” into a high knowledge area, “these methods are how it fails.” Once this knowledge is acquired solutions can be found for the problems so that a high quality product is produced.
Applications Development: (1) The development of a software product in a planned and structured process to perform a task, such as keeping inventory and billing customers. (2) The creation of programs that perform micro-tasks or functions for software and hardware. These are useful for managing large quantities of data quickly and automatically.
Architecture: A structural design of shared environments, methods of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, and online communities. Ways of bringing the principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.
Asynchronous Groupware: A system or process that allows groups to interact and collaborate at different times through email, writing systems, or other electronic means.
Audit: An overall analysis of a person, business, organization or process. The purpose is to evaluate a particular means such as energy conservation, project management, or financial accountability.
Augmented Product: The non-physical part of a product, such as warranty.
Autonomous Products: Products which also make decisions and work with little to no user interaction. Many autonomous products have sensors which supply constant data about the environment to enable the decision making process.
Autonomous Team: also: autonomous work group. A self-contained group which works towards specific goals without the influence of an outside party like a manger. Instead the group itself determines goals, timelines, and work practices.
Back-Up: Evidence that an innovation is successful and worth investing in.
Balanced Scorecard: A way of measuring performance in order to provide feedback to an organization so that management can better implement strategies.
Benchmarking: The method of searching for new/better procedures by comparing your own procedures to that of the very best, it involves quantitative and qualitative data and can apply to both services and products.
Benefit: Advantage, desirable outcome, desirable attribute of a service or good, what a customer receives from making a purchase.
Best Practice: A technique that has continually shown superior results compared to other methods, used as a benchmark.
Best Practice Study: The procedure of figuring out which method results in the best practice, or best way to do something.
Beta Test: Pilot test of a product before commercial production.
Brainstorming: Can be a spiral, a model, a web, any means by which companies solve problems through creative ideation.
Brand: Unique combination of symbols, words, sounds or images that identify a product and separate from competitors.
Brand Development Index (BDI): Percentage of brand’s sale in a particular area in relation to the country population in a state, city county etc. The BDI is derived by dividing an area’s percent of total U.S. sales by that area’s percent of population.
Breadboard: A thin, blank, often white board on which a prototype circuit with numerous connections for circuit elements is constructed.
Break-even Point: The volume of sales at which a company’s net sales just equals its costs. No profit is made at break even point.
Business Analysis: The practice of enabling change in an organizational context, by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders.
Business Case: A document that facilitates a decision to start or continue, a new project, major product development or feature enhancement. It should contain the information necessary for the business to make a decision.
Business Model Innovation: Centers on taking an existing business model and adapting it to a new direction in order to have a sole market niche.
Business-to-Business: Transactions between business, such as a manufacturer and wholesaler or between wholesaler and retailer.
Buyer: Party which acquires, or agrees to acquire, ownership (in case of goods), or benefit or usage (in case of services), in exchange for money or other consideration under a contract of sale. Also can be referred to as a purchaser the one who bought the product.
Buyer Concentration: Measures the extent to which a large percentage of a given product is purchased by relatively few buyers.
Cannibalization: A phenomenon that results when a firm develops a new product or service that steals business or market share from one or more of its existing products and services.
Capacity Planning: The process of determining the production capacity needed by an organization to meet changing demands for its products. In the context of capacity planning, “capacity” is the maximum amount of work that an organization is capable of completing in a given period.
Centers of Excellence: Most often unique to the organization or business unit that creates them. They are usually comprised of elements that make it a centralized collection of subject matter, research, standards and policy design, educational opportunities and success criteria in the given subject.
Certification: Refers to the confirmation of certain characteristics of an object, person, or organization. This confirmation is often, but not always, provided by some form of external review, education, assessment, or audit.
Champion: An individual who is intensely interested and involved with the overall objectives and goals of the project and who plays a dominant role in many of the research-engineering interaction events through some of the stages, overcoming technical and organizational obstacles and pulling the effort through its final achievement by the sheer force of his will and energy.
Charter: A document outlining the principles, functions, and organization of a corporate body.
Checklist: A type of informational job aid used to reduce failure by compensating for potential limits of human memory and attention. It helps to ensure consistency and completeness in carrying out a task.
Chunks: Small parts, or tasks, of a problem. They form one solution when pulled together.
Clock Speed: The time it takes for innovation cycles to pass.
Co-location: A term used to describe a central shared network or server utilized by all members of a facility or organization, such as a central server in an office used by all employees. This helps keep individual employees easily connected within their own business community.
Cognitive Dissonance: The state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.
Cognitive Model: An approximation to animal cognitive processes (predominantly human) for the purposes of comprehension and prediction.
Cognitive Walk Through: A usability inspection method used to identify usability issues in design or product, focusing on how easy it is for new users to accomplish tasks with the system.
Collaborative Product Development CCPD): A business strategy or technique involving the use of specialized software applications and work processes to allow multiple organizations to easily cooperate on the development of a product. This cooperation may utilize resources such as email, chat/video software, desktop sharing, and visualization tools like computer assisted drawing (CAD).
Commercialization: The process or cycle of introducing a product to the market. Similarly: bringing a product out of its development stage to make it available for mass market use and distribution.
Competitive Intelligence: The process of gathering, analyzing, and distributing information about products, competitors, and customers to support the strategic decision making ability of organization executives.
Computer-Aided Design (CAD) also known as Computer-Aided Drafting and Design (CADD): The use of computer technology and specialized software to develop precise drawings and computer models that can be easily stored, shared, and modified.
Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE): The use of computers and specialized software to perform automated analysis of engineering designs to calculate their performance and properties.
Computer-Enhanced Creativity: The phenomenon by which the utilization of computer technology and software enhances and eases the creative abilities of the individual; the use of computers to expand personal imagination and its translation into new or innovative concepts.
Concept Generation: The means by which new ideas, designs, and models are created; sometimes used to define the second phase of the innovation process also called idea generation or ideation.
Concept Statement: A brief official summary of the purpose of a project.
Concept Study Activity: A activity in which a concept can be tested to find flaws in the concept.
Concept Test: The process of using quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate consumer response to a product or idea prior to the introduction of the product to the market; a preemptive survey of the consumer market for a product or idea.
Concurrency: Doing multiple steps of a project at once instead of tackling one at a time.
Concurrent Engineering: Designing and manufacturing a product at the same time.
Conjoint Analysis: When different features of a product or service are evaluated by having consumers test them.
Consensus: Agreement in judgment or opinion reached by the entirety of a group or organization; general agreement; a form of decision making requiring all parties to agree completely with issues.
Consumer: The target demographic/s or group/s of people that the product/s or service/s is targeting.
Consumer Market: The purchasing of product/s or service/s by the consumers.
Consumer Need: A problem that the consumer/s would like fixed by a service or product.
Consumer Panels: Sample of consumers in a consumer market whose buying behavior is assumed to represent the entire consumer market.
Contextual Inquiry: An open-ended form of research-based interview, in which a researcher observes a subject during the course of two hours of normal activity, and then provides feedback regarding the activity. It is highly flexible in its methodology, allowing it to be adapted to almost any activity or workplace. It provides detailed and relevant information regarding the nature of the activity, and is useful in uncovering tacit knowledge often unknown by the subject itself.
Contextual Market Research: A hands-on inquiry into the information, segmentation, and trends of a potential market. It distinguishes the need, market size, and competition, and allows an edge on the competition.
Contingency Plan: A preemptive course of action if a desired behavior or procedure goes awry with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Continuous Improvement: An ongoing effort to improve a product, services, or goods. It can be incremental or breakthrough, and delivery processes are constantly under scrutiny as in order to their efficacy.
Continuous Learning Activity: An individual-based form of ongoing work activity that keeps employees brushed up in areas of their field, such as disciplines, policy initiatives, leadership skills, and career broadening. A CLA is essential in keeping an organization mobile and growing in a changing environment.
Contract Developer: A form of a mutual obligation among elements of a software system that comes from a supplier providing a certain good or service, entitled to obtain a fee from a client for providing such services.
Controlled Store Testing: Provides a statistically reliable set of results based off of a closely monitored real-world and small scale test environment. Useful for product testing, retail, price points, and is used to help make a go/no go decision on a capital investment.
Convergent Thinking: A single, well established answer to a problem, such as standardized tests in public school. Emphasizes logic and repetition, and does not encourage unconventional solutions.
Cooperation (Team-Based): A group of more than one person working towards a common goal, cohesively, and productively.
Crowdsourcing: Outsourcing tasks to a broad and loosely defined group of people outside of the company.
Customer Value Added Ratio: A comparison of what a company’s products are worth (WWPF or worth-what-paid-for) to the WWPF of a competitor’s products.
Customer-based Success: Success that is based on customers and the owners’ consideration of the value that a ﬁrm can provide to a customer and the value that a customer can provide to the ﬁrm.
Cycle Time: The period required to complete one cycle of an operation; or to complete a function, job, or task from start to finish. Cycle time is used in differentiating total duration of a process from its run time.
Dashboard: Shows a user useful files and other objects that they have recently accessed or are relevant to what they are doing.
Database: A systematically organized or structured repository of indexed information (usually as a group of linked data files) that allows easy retrieval, updating, analysis, and output of data. Stored usually in a computer, this data could be in the form of graphics, reports, scripts, tables, text, etc., representing almost every kind of information. Most computer applications (including antivirus software, spreadsheets,word-processors) are databases at their core.
Decision Screens: A screen that shows the decisions that are typically made during the processing rounds.
Decision Tree: A type of tree-diagram used in determining the optimum course of action, in situations having several possible alternatives with uncertain outcomes. The resulting chart or diagram (which looks like a cluster of tree branches) displays the structure of a particular decision, and the interrelationships and interplay between different alternatives, decisions, and possible outcomes.
Defenders: A group of individuals who protect rights, individuals, or information.
Deliverable: A report or item that must be completed and delivered under the terms of an agreement or contract.
Delphi Processes: A method of structuring communication and interaction to focus effectively on a large task. They target emerging trends rather than current statuses. A group is given a poll of anonymous assessments from which a correct answer is gradually derived by feedback and response.
Demographic: Recent statistical evaluations of populations. They illustrate the large masses of individuals to be targeted and catered to in big business.
Derivative: Work which relies on previously copyrighted material. Derivative work is protected by copyright law only if it displays creativity and deviation from simply copying.
Design for Excellence (DFX): Designing for excellence is a label which encompasses the general attitude of improving various parts of a product including: development, production, utilization, and disposal. Design guidelines aim to improve and invent better components and methods.
Design for Maintainability (DFMt): The process of designing a product with the intention of decreasing the requirements for maintainability. This includes decreasing maintenance difficulty, decreasing frequency of maintenance requirements, increasing availability to consumers, and decreasing logistics costs.
Design for Manufacturability (DFM): The engineering practice of defining a product by the methods of most efficient, least expensive, and most quickly repeatable production.
Design for the Environment (DFE): Is the new “Green” movement. Focuses on carbon emission, expenditure of non-replenishable resources, and impact on natural ecosystems and aims to reduce these effects.
Design of Experiments (DOE): Essentially the process of conducting experiments in order to determine the root cause of a desired (or undesired) outcome. This involves the establishment of independent variables, an adequate selection of subjects, and a controlled manipulation of variables.
Design to Cost: Aims to create a product with the lowest cost possible with an acceptable product. Usually a maximum cost is established and trade-offs and optimizations are analyzed. Cost is treated as a limitation rather than a variable.
Design Validation: The process of verifying that the product meets the requirements of the target demographic. Designs may be validated through experimentation, but the ultimate test it the marketplace.
Development Change Order (DCO): A component of the change management process whereby changes in the scope of work agreed too.
Development: The act or process of developing; a product, concept or idea.
Diffusion: The process by which a new idea or a new product is accepted by the market.
Digital Mock-Up: A concept that allows the description of a product usually in 3D, for its entire life cycle.
Discontinuous Innovation: Innovation that, if adopted, requires a significant change in behavior.
Discounted Cash-Flow (DCF) Analysis: A valuation method used to estimate the attractiveness of an investment opportunity. Uses future free cash flow projections and discounts them (most often using the weighted average cost of capital) to arrive at a present value, which is used to evaluate the potential for investment.
Discrete Choice Experiment: Widely used for the analysis of individual choice behavior and can be applied to choice problems in many fields such as economics, environmental management, urban planning, etc.
Dispersed Teams: A group of individuals who work across time, space, and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technology.
Distribution: One of the four elements of the marketing mix. An organization or set of organizations (go-between) involved in the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption by a consumer or business user.
Divergent Thinking: To generate many different ideas about a topic in a short period of time.
Diversification: Refers to when a company decides to focus on creating new products and services to sell rather than improving on existing ideas. This often means going into territory the company is not familiar with and can be very risky yet very rewarding.
Dynamically Continuous Innovation: The introduction of new products with an element of significant innovation that could require major reassessment of the product within customer’s buying behavior.
Early Adopters: A person who starts using a product or technology as soon as it becomes available.
Economic Value Added (EVA): A measurement of shareholder value as a company’s operating profits after tax, less an appropriate charge for the capital used in creating the profits.
Empathic Design: A user-centered design approach that pays attention to the user’s feelings toward a product.
Engineering Design: The systematic and creative application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems.
Engineering Model – (Model-Driven Engineering – MDE): A software development methodology which focuses on creating and exploiting domain models (that is, abstract representations of the knowledge and activities that govern a particular application domain), rather than on the computing (or algorithmic) concepts. The MDE approach is meant to increase productivity by maximizing compatibility between systems (via reuse of standardized models), simplifying the process of design (via models of recurring design patterns in the application domain), and promoting communication between individuals and teams working on the system (via a standardization of the terminology and the best practices used in the application domain).
Enhanced New Product: A new product that has enhanced features that enable it to claim superiority over competitors on the basis of a common ground. In addition to unique features, it heavily advertises that it offers something that other brands lack.
Entrance Requirement: Something essential to the existence or occurrence of something else prior to embarking on an opportunity.
Entrepreneur: One who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.
Environmental Sustainability: Addressing the economic, environmental and social responsibilities and managing them accordingly towards the attainment of a desired level of extracting natural resources without destroying the ecological balance of an area.
Ergonomic Design: The application of human factor data to the design of products and spaces to improve function and efficiency.
Ethnocentric Approach/Company: When persons of the parent country of a business or company fill key positions within the company at home and abroad. This technique is useful when introducing a new product or technology to another country.
Ethnography: A detailed, often scientific, description of a particular society or culture.
Evaluative Market Research: Research done in order to gain a more through understanding of a particular market in order to use resources and sell products more efficiently. Also performed when determining critical market issues or problems.
Event: A turning point in the process of innovation, usually a critical or dramatic occurring, for the better or worse of the company, innovation, etc.
Event Map: Organizing the when, where, benefits, losses, costs, and/or overall results of events in sequential order.
Excursion: A trip taken by company workers in order to benefit or advertise a particular product or idea.
Exit Requirement: a.k.a. Exit Criteria: A specific set of requirements for businesses, investors, and/or companies to leave a particular business. Those requirements include time; profit margins, product checkpoints met, etc.
Exit Strategy: A long-term plan for the future of the company. Typically, companies are passed down through families, bought by other companies, or traded within the stock market.
Experience Curve: The experience curve shows the relationship between production cost and cumulative production quantity for a given product. New technologies also affect the curve.
Explicit Customer Requirement: A requirement of the customer that is voiced through feedback and other sources that dictates the success of the product. Without such a requirement, the product will fail.
Factory Cost: The cost in money to produce a product, usually measured by currency and excluding any blood, sweat, or tears that went into its creation.
Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FMEA): A process in which you systematically analyze a product’s faults and rate them based on their severity, occurrence, noticeability, and reveals many new avenues for more innovation to occur.
Failure Rate: See (Success Rate)
Feasibility Determination: A measurement of how humanly possible an idea is, and whether or not it is something to be pursued.
Feature: (1) A facet of a given product. (2) An unintended fault that becomes preferable.
Feature Creep: Innovation at its most common pace. Features added on or improved in increments.
Field Testing: The process of which one discovers many, many new faults to improve on.
Financial Success: An unpredictable situation given up to chance that only has one constant: innovation.
Firefighting: Patching up faults, without ever fixing them. May lead to actual firefighting in some cases.
Firm-Level Success: Success measured by a company’s ability to thrive.
First-to-Market: When a company thinks they have a hot new idea or product, it will try to operate at hyper-speed in order to seize first-mover advantage and gain market share.
Focus Groups: A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging.
Forecast: The outlook and prediction of a market.
Function: Specific process, action or task that a system is able to perform.
Functional Elements: Parts of a product that serve a specific purpose.
Functional Pipeline Management: Determine whether, and how a set of projects in the portfolio can be executed by a company in a specified time, given finite development resources in the company.
Functional Schematic: A presentation of the element-by-element relationship of all parts of a system.
Functional Testing: Test done as quality control, performed to ensure the product meets all of its specifications.
Fuzzy Front End: The organization formulates a concept of the product to be developed and decides whether or not to invest resources in the further development of an idea.
Fuzzy Gates: One of the various stage gates in discussing process versus time to market.
Gamma Test: Measures the strength of association of the cross tabulated data when both variables are measured at the ordinal level.
Gantt Chart: Bar chart that illustrates a project schedule.
Gap Analysis: A tool that helps companies compare actual performance with potential performance.
Gate: A set of values that serve to isolate a specific group of cytometrics events from a large set.
Gatekeepers: The hiring of agent to pursue the principal’s interests.
Generative Market Research: Market research (focus groups, surveys, etc.) used to produce results of how to attract certain markets.
Geocentric Approach/ Company: Company with offices in multiple nations that attempts to achieve goals on a local/international level.
Globalization: A product/service that is developed to be distributed globally, but is also fashionable to accommodate the user/consumer in a local market.
Graceful Degradation: Also known as fault-tolerance, is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the failure of some of its components.
Green Architecture: Environmentally conscious design techniques in architecture to minimize the negative environmental impact of buildings.
Green New Product Development (NPD): A new product whose greenness is significantly better than conventional or competitive products.
Gross Rating Points (GRPs): Term used in advertising to measure the size of an audience reached by specific media vehicle. Calculated by multiplying the percentage of target audience reached by the frequency the audience saw the advertisement.
Groupware: Computer software designed to help the way documents and rich media are shared to enable more effective team collaboration.
Growth Stage: Third stage in a product’s life cycle where sales revenue increases rapidly, and profits reach a peak.
Heavyweight Team: Developmental project team consisting of specialized experts led by a project manager. The project manager has direct access to, and responsibility for, the work of all those involved in the project.
Hunting Ground: New business opportunity.
Hunting for Hunting Grounds: Discovering fundamentally new opportunities and exploring new areas of growth for a business.
Hurdle Rate: Minimum acceptable rate of return a project manager or company is willing to accept before starting a project, given its rick and the opportunity cost of foregoing other projects.
Idea: An idea can be a “plan of action” or an “intention” to do or create something.
Idea Exchange: Incorporating different people with their different ideas and perspectives through conversing.
Idea Generation (Ideation): To form an idea; imagine or conceive.
Idea Merit Index: Systematic way to understand the particular merit of an idea.
Implementation Team: A cross-functional executive team representing various areas of the company, project, or idea.
Implicit Product Requirement: In explicit requirements that are not directly expressed or captured but are essential to meet a company’s goal. They are things that are assumed to be “there”.
In-Licensing: A partnership between two companies to share the benefits and risks of licensing a new product due to shared interests, goals, or intentions.
Incremental Improvement: Improvements that are implemented on a continual basis.
Incremental Innovation: “Sustaining innovation” by using existing forms or technologies as a starting point. Then by using incremental improvements or reconfiguration to serve some other process.
Industrial Design (ID): The use or combination of applied art and applied science to improve aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability, of a product; may also be used to improve the products marketability and production.
Information: Knowledge communicated, gained, or received concerning a particular idea, fact, or circumstance.
Information Acceleration: Refers to the staggering rate at which information is created globally. This concept is sometimes used to create models, or virtual buying environments, for new or developing products that simulate the environment available at the time the consumer will be purchasing the product.
Informed Intuition: The process of gathering as much information about your consumers as possible and developing a deep understanding of the customer base (who are they, how do they perceive you, what marketing techniques work and what doesn’t, the overall economical situation, etc.) in order to make an informed gut decision on how to move forward.
Initial Screening: The elimination of product concepts and ideas early on in the process of new product development before irrationally devoting resources and funds to an idea that may not be further developed.
Innovation: The creation of new or improved products, ideas, processes, or services, which are developed and marketed. Innovation differs from invention in that invention focuses on the manufacturing of a product whereas innovation is based around new ideas and creativity.
Innovation Engine: A set of social practices and organizational structures that promote ongoing stimulation of new ideas, combined with mechanisms that can reliably and effectively channel those ideas into a flourishing network of collaborative projects.
Innovation Strategy: A road map containing clear goals and tactics put together by a company or an individual to facilitate innovation.
Innovative Problem Solving: Combines rigorous problem definition, pattern-breaking generation of ideas, and action planning which results in new, unique, and unexpected solutions. Stages of innovative problem solving include: framing the problem, diagnosis, generating solutions, making choices, and taking action.
Integrated Architecture: The convergence of components to simplify and optimize a process or structure.
Integrated Product Development (IPD): Involves the integration of both the design of a new product and the design of the manufacturing process in order to achieve fast, low cost development and production while still providing a high quality product.
Intellectual Property: An idea, design or concept that doesn’t manifest itself in a physical form. This could include copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, etc.
Interlocking Teams: The collaboration of different specialized groups, all with the task of accomplishing the same objective. These teams could specialize in business, innovation, engineering, design, art, marketing, etc.
Internal Rate of Return (IRR): Used in capital budgeting to measure the profitability of investments. The IRR makes the net present value of all cash flows from a particular project equal to zero. Generally speaking, the higher a project’s internal rate of return, the more desirable it is to undertake the project.
Intrapreneur: A member of a business (most likely a manager) whose task is to encourage risk taking and innovative thinking among fellow coworkers.
Introduction Stage: One of the first stages in any products life cycle. In this stage the product is being introduced onto the market, and sales numbers a generally not very high. There is a responsibility for the business to promote the product and “educate the public” about the products existence.
Invention: Taking already existing ideas, concepts, and designs and utilizing them in a new way that achieves a new task.
ISO-9000: A quality management system that was designed to help organizations ensure that they meet the needs of customers and other stakeholders.
Issue: A problem or dilemma that needs to be addressed.
Journal of Product Innovation Management: The leading academic journal devoted to the latest research, theory, and practice in new product and service development. It is published six times a year, and is one of the important benefits of being a member of PDMA (Product Development and Management Association).
Kaizen: A Japanese word for “improvement.” The word comes from Japan following World War II. It comes from the Japanese words 改 (“kai”) which means “change” or “to correct” and 善 (“zen”) which means “good”.
Launch: The date of and events surrounding the release of a product.
Lead User: A specific type of user of a product or service that is on the leading edge of significant market trends. There is a strong incentive to find solutions to meet the needs of these users. When development of products or services are completed, they often become important commercially as user needs become the mainstream. The term was coined in 1986 by Professor Eric von Hippel.
Lean NPD: Product development which maximizes output with a minimum of input or resources.
Learning Curve: The learning curve of a product is the average rate for a user to come to understand a product and use it with ease. a high curve is a product that’s difficult to learn to work with and is considered less consumer friendly.
Learning Organization: An organic group/company which always seeks to evolve by educating its staff.
Life Cycle Cost: The projected total costs of owning a property from inception to end use.
Lightweight Team: A lightweight team pares down to about 3-5 members each with strong expertise in a key area. the lightweight team if ideologically aligned can provide strong security.
Line Extension: A line extension is the addition of available options which don’t drastically change the basic product but offer a new flavor or color for example.
Long-term Success: This is the ability for a company or product to last over time and through changing climates.
M-Shaped Curve: A curve that demonstrates the relationship between good ideas and innovative ideas over time.
Maintenance Activity: This can be seen as a large scale gear-oiling in a sense. maintenance activity is work done to promote harmony and therefore productivity in the workforce.
Manufacturability: Extent to which a good can be manufactured with relative ease at minimum cost and maximum reliability.
Manufacturing Assembly Procedure: The way in which a product is assembled and readied for the market.
Manufacturing Design: The general engineering art of designing products in such a way that they are easy to manufacture.
Manufacturing Test Specification and Procedure: The testing of a manufactured prototype in order to gauge the general preparedness for mass production.
Market Conditions: Characteristic of a market in which a new product will be introduced such as the number of competitors, level of intensity or competitiveness, and the market’s growth rate.
Market Development: The expansion of the total market for a product or company by entering the new segments of the market, converting non-users into users, and/or increasing usage by users.
Market Innovation: Can be in the form of technology or ideas. These are positive changes in the market environment that can result in companies changing to adapt or may have been caused by companies themselves.
Market Penetration: When a company or someone with a product introduces it to a market. Often the product or service is tailored specifically to survive and be profitable in the market.
Market Research: Component of marketing research whereby a specific market is identified and its size and characteristics are measured.
Market Segmentation: The process of defining and subdividing a large homogenous market into clearly identifiable segments having similar needs, wants, or demand characteristics. Its objective is to design a marketing mix that precisely matches the expectations of customers in the target segment.
Market Share: A percentage of total sales volume in a market captured by a brand, product, or company.
Market Testing: An examination to see if a sample of product will sell in a market.
Market-Driven: A strategy where the firms allow the marketplace decide its own product innovation and the primary users of this strategy tends to be the consumer product firms.
Maturity Stage: It is the third stage of product life cycle which demonstrates the sales and profit margins decreasing.
Metrics: The measurement of quantifiable components on the company’s performance.
Mindmapping: A visualization method used to organize thoughts, ideas and tasks around a central idea. These diagrams can aid in studying, solving problems, or making decisions by creating a structure in which ideas are linked by different categories or classifications.
Modular Architecture: System of any design which contains any separate components that can be connected together.
Monitoring Frequency: The scale of an acceptable range within which the operations’ will be conducted by next monitoring inspection. It can be determined by an assessment within the risk factors at the operation.
Morphological Analysis: A creative problem-solving strategy that uses a matrix to organize and moreover forces the associations between the parts of a problem in an order to attempt and produce a novel solution idea.
Multifunctional Team: A group of members from at least two or more departments that comes together to solve a problem. They also handle the situation where it requires three parts; capabilities, knowledge, and training where it cannot be found from any one source.
Needs Analysis: A process in user centered design that focuses on the user’s satisfaction with the new product or system. It concentrates on requirements related to the goals and needs of the community and the user in order to define the requirements of the system being developed.
Needs Statement: A statement which provides the detail descriptions of the functional specifications, technical requirements, and security standards that determines the selection for the technology solution.
Net Present Value (NPV): a finance term (also Net Present Worth (NPW)) that refers to the incoming an outgoing series of cash flow and is defines as the sum of all present values.
Network Diagram: An interconnected groups or systems that is made up from network and is use in computer telecommunication to draw the graphical chart of a network.
New Concept Development Model: A model which provides a common language and terminology necessary to optimize the “Front End of Innovation.”
New Product: Products that are new to a company or to a market. They may include existing products which have been improved or revised, brand extensions, additions to existing lines, repositioned products targeted to a new market and new to the world products.
New Product Development (NPD): The creation of new products needed for growth or to replace those in the decline stage of their life cycle.
New Product Development Process (NPD Process): A seven step process describing how a new product comes to the market. The steps in the process include idea generation, idea screening, concept development and testing, business analysis, beta testing and marketing, technical implementation, commercialization and new product pricing.
New Product Development Professional (NPDP): A certification which confirms mastery of new product development principles and practices.
New Product Idea: Generating new ideas about products using basic research, SWOT analysis, market and consumer trends, competitors, and focus groups.
New Product Introduction (NPI): The introduction of a new product or product line, usually by an advertising campaign.
New-to-the-World Product: Products which serve a purpose for which no product has previously existed.
Nominal Group Process: A controlled variant of brainstorming used in problem solving sessions to encourage creative thinking, without group interaction at idea-generation stage.
Non-commercialized Concept Statement: A text description of a new product presented to the consumer which is used to get the customers attention and gauge initial interest, not convince them to buy the product.
Non-Destructive Test: Testing that is comprised of test methods used to examine an object, material or system without impairing its future usefulness.
Non-Product Advantage: Competitive advantage gained not from product attributes but through identity and image of the firm, widespread distribution, effective communications, customer service, and technical support.
Not-Invented-Here-Syndrome: Used to describe persistent social, corporate or institutional culture that avoids using or buying already existing products, research, standards, or knowledge because of their external origins.
Off-Shoring: A type of outsourcing that involves moving a business’ functions to foreign country. This is usually done to reduce business costs seeing that the foreign country has more favorable economic conditions.
Open Innovation: The use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate innovation. With knowledge now widely distributed, companies cannot rely entirely on their own research, but should acquire inventions or intellectual property (such as patents) from other companies when it advances the business model.
Operations: Specific processes or sets of functions of practical or mechanical nature in some form of work or production.
Operator’s Manual: A guide that communicates and assists the operator in using a particular system. Most operator manuals are associated with electronic goods and software; manuals also contain written guides and associated images.
Opportunity: A good position, chance, or prospect that is favorable for attainment of a goal or other advancement.
Organizational Innovation: Improvements on a company’s organizational methods that make it more reliable or efficient or easy to manage.
Outsourcing: Any task, operation, or job that could be performed by employees within an organization, but is instead contracted by a third party for a significant period of time.
Outstanding Corporate Innovator Award: The Product Development and Management Association’s Outstanding Corporate Innovator (OCI) Award is the only innovation award that recognizes sustained (five or more years) quantifiable business results from new products and services. The OCI Selection Committee uses a rigorous process to evaluate each year’s nominees and to select those companies that have proven themselves exceptionally capable of integrating strategy, culture, process and technology to consistently create and capture value through successful product and service innovation.
Pareto Chart: A type of chart that contains both bars and a line graph, where individual values are represented in descending order by bars, and the cumulative total is represented by the line. The left vertical axis is the frequency of occurrence, but it can also represent cost or another important unit of measure. The right vertical axis is the cumulative percentage of the total number of occurrences, total cost, or total of the particular unit of measure.
Participatory Design: Also known as “Cooperative Design”, an approach to design attempting to actively involve all employees and end users in the design process in order to help ensure the product designed meets everyone’s needs and is usable. It is used in a wide array of fields to ensure a way of creating environments that are more responsive and appropriate to their inhabitants’ and users’ cultural, emotional, spiritual and practical needs.
Patent: A form intellectual property consisting of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor for a limited period of time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention.
Payback: To reap the rewards, financially and otherwise of innovation.
Payout: The expected financial return from an investment over a given period of time.
Perceptual Mapping: A graphical technique used by marketers that attempts to visually display the perceptions of current and potential customers.
Performance Indicators: A measurement used by an organization to evaluate its success in various endeavors. These indicators can be represented in terms of specific strategic goals.
Performance Measurement System: A process for collecting and reporting information regarding the performance of an individual, group, or organization.
Phase Review Process: A review conducted at the end of each phase in a stage-gate process, used to review the work conducted in each phase.
Physical Elements: Components, parts, and assemblies that make up an object, which do not vary with time.
Pilot Gate Meeting: A trial gate meeting usually held at the launch of a stage-gate process to test the design of a process and familiarize participants.
Pipeline (product pipeline): A tool that incorporates multiple stages in the systematic application of innovation in the product development process.
Pipeline Alignment: Ensuring that organizational objectives match pipeline inputs.
Pipeline Inventory: The existing process components of each phase that collectively make up the pipeline.
Pipeline Management Enabling Tools: Supporting tools which management uses to improve the overall effectiveness of the pipeline process.
Pipeline Management Process: Process of establishing effective methods of evaluation throughout the pipeline phases.
Pipeline Management Teams: Groups that act as support function in the overall goal of the project.
Pipeline Management: The process management of all activities associated with creating a product.
Platform Product: Strategically designed product that is meant to enable a company to use the same components in different product offerings.
Polycentric Approach/ Company: An organizational structure that incorporates cross-functional methods to achieve the company’s objectives.
Portfolio: A collection of current and potential project/product ideas that an organization possesses.
Portfolio Criteria: The requirements a portfolio to be considered safe. Some might include diversified risk and structure decision making.
Portfolio Management: Process of making investment decisions using money other people have placed under his or her control or a person who manages a financial institution’s asset and liability (loan and deposit) portfolios.
Pre-Production Unit: Between a prototype and the production model, still has some kinks to work out.
Process Champion: Champions have the lead role within the business units. They define how business processes are to be executed.
Process Innovation: Changing the way something is done. Whether it’s how a product is made or business is conducted.
Process Managers: Oversee the ensemble of activities of planning and monitoring the performance of a process.
Process Map: Refers to activities involved in defining exactly what a business entity does, who is responsible, to what standard a process should be completed and how the success of a business process can be determined.
Process Mapping: A workflow diagram to bring forth a clearer understanding of a process or series of parallel processes.
Process Maturity Level: How established and stable a process is within a business.
Process Owner: The person who is responsible to design the processes necessary to achieve the objectives of the business plans that are created by the Business Leaders. The process owner is responsible for the creation, update and approval of documents (procedures, work instructions/protocols) to support the process.
Process Re-Engineering: The analysis and design of workflows and processes within an organization.
Product: An object produced by a particular action or process; the result of mental or physical work or effort.
Product and Process Performance Success: The measurement of how effectively the product development process is.
Product Approval Committee (PAC): A group of people who follow certain procedures to ensure the product can go further into development or to a new stage of the process.
Product Architecture: Description of the way(s) in which functional elements of a product or system are assigned to its constituent sections or subsystems, and of the way(s) in which they interact.
Product Definition: Producer’s view of a product that includes product concept, design requirements and specifications, features, target market, pricing points, positioning strategy, etc. See also product description.
Product Development: A process many companies use to come up with new things or services to bring to the market. Product development usually uses the stage gate process.
Product Development & Management Association (PDMA): The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) is the premier global advocate for product development and management professionals.
Product Development Check List: A tool used in order to organize the development process and visualize the methods used to create the product.
Product Development Portfolio: An exhibit of progress made through the project.
Product Development Process: System of defined steps and tasks such as strategy, organization, concept generation, marketing plan creation, evaluation, and commercialization of a new product. It is a cycle by means of which an innovative firm routinely converts ideas into commercially viable goods or services.
Product Development Strategy: The plan by which products are developed or innovated and offered to new or existing customers.
Product Development Team: A team composed of people specializing in multiple fields and professions who work together to develop and execute production of a new product, or innovate an existing product.
Product Discontinuation: When a company stops offering a given product in a given market because it is obsolete, uncompetitive, or other reasons.
Product Discontinuation Timeline: A plan which dictates when and how a product is to be discontinued.
Product Failure: When a product does not meet the requirements and expectations set by the company which produces it.
Product Family: A group of products with either a similar use and purpose, or similar consumer base.
Product Innovation: Making improvements on an existing product in order to make it function better or adapt to a changing market.
Product Innovation Charter (PIC): A definition of a product development team including its product idea, its goals and plan for turning that idea into a product, and how the team is to be structured.
Product Interfaces: A product as an end-user sees it, devoid of its internal workings.
Product Life Cycle: The typical product life as seen in four stages – birth, growth, maturity, and decline.
Product Life-Cycle Management: The management of production, sale, and identity of a product through its life.
Product Line: A group of related products manufactured by a single company. The marketing strategy of offering for sale several related products.
Product Management: An organizational lifecycle function within a company dealing with the planning, forecasting, or marketing of a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle. The role consists of Product development and product marketing, which are different efforts, with the objective of maximizing sales revenues, market share, and profit margins.
Product Manager: The product manager is often responsible for analyzing market conditions and defining features or functions of a product. The role of product management spans many activities from strategic to tactical and varies based on the organizational structure of the company. A product manager considers numerous factors such as intended demographic, the products offered by the competition, and how well the product fits with the company’s business model.
Product Plan: The process of creating a product idea and following through on it until the product is introduced to the market. Additionally, a small company must have an exit strategy for its product in case the product does not sell. A product plan entails managing the product throughout its life using various marketing strategies, including product extensions or improvements, increased distribution, price changes and promotions.
Product Platforms: A set of subsystems and interfaces that form a common structure from which a stream of derivative products can be efficiently developed and produced. Common design, formula, or a versatile product, based on which a family (line) of products is built over time.
Product Portfolio: A combination of two or more product families. The range of products a company has in development or available for consumers at any one time. Managing product portfolio is important for cash flow. The set of different products that an organization produces, ideally balanced so that some products are mature, some are still in their growth stage while others are waiting to be introduced.
Product Rejuvenation: Creating a large surge in sales for a product through intense marketing effort.
Product Requirements Document: A document written by a company that defines a product they are making, or the requirements for one or more new features for an existing product. A PRD is often created after a marketing requirements document (MRD) has been written and been given approval by management, and is usually written before a technical requirements document. It is designed to allow people within a company to understand what a product should do and how it should work. PRDs are most frequently written for software products, but can be used for any type of product. A PRD should generally define the problems that a product (or product feature) must solve, but should avoid defining the technical solution to those problems. This distinction allows engineers to use their expertise to provide the optimal solution to the requirements defined in the PRD. A PRD sometimes serves as a marketing requirements document as well, particularly if the product is small or uncomplicated.
Product Superiority: Product has the best quality or concept than any other product that maybe similar.
Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT): A strategic tool designed to analyze and represent the tasks involved in completing a given project.
Program Manager: Has an oversight of the purpose and status of all projects in a Program and can use this oversight to support project-level activity to ensure the overall program goals are likely to be met, possibly by providing a decision-making capacity that cannot be achieved at project level or by providing the Project Manager with a program perspective when required, or as a sounding board for ideas and approaches to solving project issues that have program impacts. Typically in a program there is a need to identify and manage cross-project dependencies and often the PMO (Program or Project Management Office) may not have sufficient insight of the risk, issues, requirements, design or solution to be able to usefully manage these. The Program manager may be well placed to provide this insight by actively seeking out such information from the Project Managers although in large and/or complex projects, a specific role may be required. However this insight arises, the Program Manager needs this in order to be comfortable that the overall program goals are achievable.
Resource Plan: Detailed summary of all forms of resources required to complete a product development project, including personnel, equipment, time, and finances.
Responsibility Matrix: An arrangement that shows the percentage of how each non-managerial person’s time that is to be devoted to each of the current projects in the firm’s portfolio.
Return on Investment (ROI): A standard measure of project profitability, this is the discounted profits over the life of the project expressed as a percentage of initial investment.
Rigid Gate: A review point in a Stage-Gate™ process at which all the prior stage’s work and deliverables must be complete before work in the next stage can commence.
Risk Acceptance: An uncertain event or condition for which the project team has decided not to change the project plan. A team may be forced to accept an identified risk when they are unable to identify any other suitable response to the risk.
Risk Avoidance: Changing a project plan to eliminate a risk or to protect the project objectives from any potential impact due to the risk.
Risk Management: The process of identifying, measuring, and mitigating the business risk in a product development project.
Risk Mitigation: Actions taken to reduce the probability and/or impact of a risk to below some threshold of acceptability.
Risk Tolerance: The level of risk that a project stakeholder is willing to accept. Tolerance levels are context specific. That is, stakeholders may be willing to accept different levels of risk for different types of risk, such as risks of project delay, price realization, and technical potential.
Risk Transference: Risk transference refers to the transfer or risk, or the burden of loss due to uncertainty, failure, accident, etc, from one party to another. There is a variety of technique on how to execute this process through initial assessment and subsequent maneuver to reduce risk i.e. legislation, insurance, etc.
Risk: An event or condition that may or may not occur, but if it does occur will impact the ability to achieve a project’s objectives. In new product development, risks may take the form of market, technical, or organizational issues. For more on managing product development risks, see Chapters 8 and 15 in the PDMA ToolBook 1 and Chapter 28 in The PDMA HandBook 2nd Edition.
Roadmapping: Roadmapping is the planning process that applies goals, both short term and long term, to specific proposed ‘mapped’ solutions, generally in a flow design.
Robust Design: Robust design, also referred to as the Taguchi method, seeks to maximize engineering productivity by accounting for noise such as environmental and manufacturing variation, etc.
“S” Curve: The S-Curve, or Sigmoid Curve, is used to represent the various expenditures of resources over the life of a project.
Scrum Process: An agile software development method for managing software projects and product or application development.
S-Curve (Technology S-Curve): The technology s-curve is the idea that technology evolves through an initial slow period of growth, then a fast growth period, followed by a final general plateau.
Scanner Test Markets: Scanner test markets are specially designed to provide scanner data from consumer panels to analyze a product’s performance.
Scenario Analysis: Scenario analysis is the process of future analysis through consideration of all alternative possible outcomes, which is a type of projection that is strengthened by concurrently considering all possible scenarios.
Screening: Screening is the process of analyzing many subjects to identify those subjects with a particular set of characteristics, or the targeted demographic.
Segmentation: Segmentation is the segmented grouping of potential customer groups by characterizing their needs, demand, and recognized qualities of the proposed product. An ideal market segment will be internally homogeneous, externally heterogeneous, and cost efficiently reached.
Senior Management: Senior management is the highest level of management in an organization, sometimes a management team of individuals with experience in the field. This level of management is generally responsible for corporate governance and the stakeholders.
Sensitivity Analysis: Sensitivity analysis is the technique used to analyze how different independent variable values will affect a dependent variable under a certain set of conditions, and is a prediction of a decision’s outcome.
Serendipity: Unexpected advantages or benefits incurred due to positive synergy effects of the merger. Unforeseen good fortune.
Service: Something intangible that is paid for.
Short-Term Success: Success occurring over or involving relatively a short period of time.
Should-Be Map: A chart or graph that plans and shows how one imagines things should be.
Simulated Test Market: A marketing research technique where consumers are subjected to engineered advertising and purchase decisions to examine their response to a new product or service.
Six Sigma: A disciplined, data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects.
Slip Rate: The rate at which something slips past its predicted value.
Social Sustainability: The idea that future generations should have the same or greater access to social resources as the current generation while there should also be equal access to social resources within the current generation.
Specification: Describing or identifying something precisely or of stating a precise requirement.
Speed to Market: The elapsed time from order placement to arrival on the retail sales floor.
Sponsor: Individual or entity that organizes and is committed to the development of a product, program, or project.
Stage: Is a specific part or section of a project development or a task.
Stage-Gate™ Process: A map for getting the product from an idea into a development to launch. Start at a gate, the idea, then a stage of scoping and modeling is done, step through the development gate, then arrive at a stage of development, etc.
Staged Product Development Activity: A preliminary step to developing a new product for the market.
Standard Cost: An estimation of the cost of an operation or a good.
Stop-Light Voting: Voting by assigning ideas a color from those used in a stop-light.
Strategic Balance: Reaching an equilibrium by combining long or short term objectives or factors.
Strategic Bucket: Strategic Planning for business success broken into three buckets
- Bucket 1: process improvements- doing what we do today, better
- Bucket 2: new initiatives- growing new stuff for tomorrow
- Bucket 3: stop doing – yesterday’s good ideas that are no longer a priority
Strategic New Product Development (SNPD): A preliminary step to developing a new product for the market.
Strategic Partnering: To complete a common objective, forming an alliance between others to share intellect and resources.
Strategic Pipeline Management: The distributing of sales by new channel, value, or geography.
Strategic Plan: To plan aimed to obtain desired results.
Strategy: A plan of action designed to achieve a vision. generalship.
Sub-assembly: A unit built separately, but meant to be used as a part to a larger product.
Success: Favorable or desired outcome.
Supply Chain Innovation: Changes in the way a product gets from production to distributors. Innovation in the supply chain can make a product more available or cheaper to ship.
Supply Chain Innovation: Advances in technology and socioeconomic development that businesses coordinate on a global scale to provide goods and services.
Support Service: Activity or function required for the successful completion of a project.
Sustainable NPD: Product Development that can be continued at a rate that does not supersede K.
System Hierarchy Diagram: A diagram similar to a food chain. There is the highest position, usually the CEO/Founder. Positions branch out from under him/her to provide specific roles due to their specific places in the chain. Someone is always on top.
Systems and Practices Team: A team developed to study and establish standard activities and methods used with a company to target different factors that might hinder the company strategy.
Systems and Practices: Standard activities and methods established to handle day to day and routinely occurring events, depending on their usefulness to the company.
Target Market: A particular segment of the market, targeted by by ads and a general marketing campaign.
Task Target Cost: Determining the highest allowable pricing for a New product once it hits the market.
Team Leader: Someone (or more than one) who provides guidance, instruction, direction, to a group of individuals (See team, above) focus is not only on the goal to be a achieved but on the team itself and their well-being. Often the person who speaks or represents the group.
Team Spotter’s Guide: A questionnaire used by a team leader (or team members) to diagnose the quality of the team’s functioning.
Team: Multiple people (with multiple skill sets) working together to achieve a common goal.
Technology Road Map: Plan that matched short-term and long-term goals with specific technology solutions help meet these goals.
Technology Stage Gate: A process of managing technology development; especially with high uncertainty and risk.
Technology Transfer: Refers to a process within governments, universities and other institutions that helps make technological developments and knowledge available to a wider range of users. These departments work to transfer the skills, knowledge, technology, and manufacturing methods in order to allow for the development of new products, applications, materials, and services.
Technology-Driven: The concept that breakthrough innovations are made at firms that have technical abilities and push for the development of new goods and services that are not necessarily in high market demand.
Technopreneurship: The combination of technology and entrepreneurial skills by someone who is savvy, creative, innovative and passionate about their work in trying to make the world a more technologically connected place.
Test Markets: In business and marketing, it is the geographic region or demographic group used to test a product or service before officially releasing it to market.
Think Links: A question that encourages and challenges students to think creatively; may be used as a springboard for classroom discussions or left for students to work out on their own.
Think Tank: Mostly non-profit organizations who engage in research and advocacy of a social policy, political strategies, economics, military, as well as technology fields.
Thought Organizers: Computer program that aids in grouping ideas in varying hierarchies to form a rational plan for a project or task.
Three R’s: (1) Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle—thinking green when considering a company’s sustainability. (2) Record, Recall, and Reconstruct—the creative process for coming up with ideas for new products.
Threshold Criteria: Standard for the performance targets of any proposed product development project.
Thumbnail: Small sketch, usually in pencil, of an approximated image proposal used by graphic artists.
Time-to-Market: Critical amount of time a product idea takes to get from the brainstorming phase to the final product available for the market.
Tone: Feelings and emotions consumers associate with a product.
Total Quality Management (TQM): Continual team building and management improvement.
Tracking Studies: Consumer studies conducted after a product’s launch that track the quality of the product’s reception.
Trade Secret: Confidential intellectual property that gives the property owner a competitive advantage.
Trade-Off Analysis: The process of understanding how focusing on a certain aspect of a project will necessarily affect other aspects; the goal of this process is to predict whether re-allocating resources will yield a better result.
Trademark: A unique word, sign, phrase, or sound used by a person or company to distinguish a product or service.
Trialability: A measure of how easily a new product or service can be preliminarily evaluated by the target consumer.
TRIZ: A systematic method for problem solving developed based on an analysis of patent literature to understand how problems are solved. This method starts with contradictions in needs, for example a strong but light weight vehicle, and then identifies possible avenues to solve said problem.
Uncertainty Range: An interval within which a value is expected to lie based on unknown factors or factors known to have some variation.
User: The person or persons that a product or service is intended for.
Utility: A measure of how important a product or service is to a person or persons. If a product has increased utility it will command a higher demand.
Value Analysis: A process to understand and hopefully increase the value of a new product or service.
Value Chain: A description of a process undergone by a product during which raw materials undergo processing and their value is increased through each step. Throughout the “value chain” each step adds value to the product.
Value Proposition: An expected benefit that the customer will experience from a new product or service.
Vision: An aspirational description of what an organization would like to achieve or accomplish in the mid-term or long-term future. It is intended to serves as a clear guide for choosing current and future courses of action. See also mission statement.
Voice of the Customer (VOC): A term used in business and Information Technology to describe the in-depth process of capturing a customer’s expectations, preferences and aversions.
Voice of the Engineer (VOE): A term used in designing and implementing a project to describe the in-depth process of the creation and expectations.
We-ness: A language that companies use to better able to resolve conflicts.
Workflow Design Team: Progression of steps (tasks, events, interactions) that comprise a work process, involve two or more persons, and create or add value to the organization’s activities. In a sequential workflow, each step is dependent on occurrence of the previous step; in a parallel workflow, two or more steps can occur concurrently.
Worth What Paid For (WWPF): Customer’s judgment on the satisfaction derived from a purchase. It is determined more by the item’s perceived value than by the price of contents or materials.