Management of Innovation and Product Development

Book excerpt: This textbook provides a unique and original understanding on innovation and on product design and development, and on their tight interconnections. It presents an integrated and holistic perspective on these two fields, allowing readers to understand how the phenomenon of innovation occurs – and must be managed – at different and interacting levels, from corporate strategy to design decision-making. This book explores these themes in a scientifically rigorous manner, associating academic findings with examples from business. It provides readers with the conceptual and decision-making tools required to understand and manage the process of innovation at different levels, from the analysis of industry-wide phenomena to the formulation of a strategy, and from the planning of operations to the management of technical choices. Chapters cover innovation as an economic and social phenomenon, the formulation of innovation strategy, the management of product development processes and projects and the technical design of products and services. Offering an invaluable resource to postgraduate students in economics, management and engineering, this book is also intended for managers and entrepreneurs. The book's topics are covered by associating academic findings with examples from business. For this new second edition of the book, case studies are made available through a companion LinkedIn page that is continuously updated by authors and by readers, while pointers to complementary content available on the internet are provided throughout the text.