Often businesses confront consumer preferences, increasing competition and advances in technology; credits to a rapidly changing market scenario. Your business may need to capitalize on an opportunity with the sole intent of getting a monopoly on your respective sector.
A common practice of companies is to engage in a process of understanding what their market wants, making smart product improvements, and developing new products that meet and exceed their customer’s expectations. This entire procedure can be termed as ‘New product development’ (NPD).
New product development is the process which involves forming strategy, organizing requirements, generating concepts, creating product & marketing plan, evaluating and subsequent commercialization, thereby bringing a new product to the marketplace.
‘New products’ can be:
- Products that has never been manufactured or sold before but have been introduced to ther market by others
- Product innovations created and brought to the market for the first time. They may be completely original products, or existing products that have been modified and improved
- NPD is not limited to existing businesses, but rather, new businesses, sole traders or even freelancers can forge a place in the market by researching, developing, and introducing new products. Similarly, one doesn’t need to be an innovator to master NPD. One can also consider purchasing new products through licensing or copyright acquisition.
This article explains the importance of NPD and Industrial Design which is a subset of NPD and describes the steps involved.