Findings
The seven companies included in the case study implemented
a range of process modifications to address deficiencies and
failure points in their new product development processes
(Table 1). These modifications, supported by a selection of
new tools
Our findings indicate that all three firms organized the front end into different sub-phases, with
distinct activities in each phase. Overall, the key activities and phases were surprisingly similar among
the firms studied. The specific terminology to label these sub-phases varied among the firms studied,
but the labels informal start-up, formal idea-study and formal pre-study capture the essence of each
sub-phase respectively