Establishing a Market-Based Fuzzy Front-End Innovation in New Product Development

Taiwan's industry consists mainly of OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and ODMs (original design manufacturers). In transforming Taiwan's industrial focus from OEM and ODM to high value-added OBM (original brand manufacturers), the key is to grasp the target customer needs and transfer them into specifications. It is also imperative to create a fit process for new product development. In this paper, the author proposes a fuzzy front-end innovation process that includes tools and techniques of how to survey the future trend, meet the target customers' unmet needs, and utilize differentiated new products or services to defeat its competitors. More importantly, the author considers patent deployment and business model development pivotal to the fruits of R&D(research and development) and long-term competitive edge.