Improving new product development innovation effectiveness by using problem solving tools during the conceptual development phase: Integrating Design Thinking and TRIZ

The objective of this research is to improve innovation effectiveness during new product development (NPD) processes in industry by using problem‐solving techniques during the conceptual development phase. The concept phase of physical NPDs is widely recognized in the literature as the time when the target market is identified, alternative product concepts are created and evaluated for further development and testing, also called the “fuzzy front end” or “discovery stage”. Design Thinking (DT) and TRIZ were the chosen problem‐solving techniques to support this stage because of their complementariness. While DT is most recognized as an approach that drives project teams toward the end‐users, TRIZ has its main strength during idea generation and selection processes where it has a robust set of analytical tools to drive NPD teams to a final product concept. After conducting a literature review to understand the strengths and limitations of both techniques, a framework is proposed by integrating them into the conceptual development phase of an industrial NPD process. The proposed framework is then tested and validated after being applied successfully in an NPD process in the automotive industry. The automotive industry is a good example of an incremental type of industry when designing its components for new vehicle models, and is therefore a very appropriate laboratory for validating the proposed framework.