Chapter 8: Creativity and Product Development

Over the past 20 years, product life cycles have gotten shorter and shorter—in large part due to faster technological breakthroughs. To keep pace with this environment of rapid change, companies must establish a creative environment that strongly encourages spending time on new ideas, concepts, and solutions. Creative ideas, concepts and solutions are turned into products and services through the product design and development process. This process is concerned with the concrete details that embody a new product or service. Prototypes are models of a product or service and can help a new technology venture to learn about the right form of the product for the customer. Scenarios are used to create a mental model of a possible sequence of future events or outcomes.