Introduction

Abstract

Managing the development of their product innovations confronts industrial firms with a severe challenge. Nearly two-thirds of new products fail after their launch, largely because companies are under pressure to address rapidly evolving customer demand (Lempres 2003). The basic assumption that companies can anticipate demand and mobilize their scarce development resources in previously specified ways simply does not hold true anymore. Due to customers’ fast changing product requirements, which result from rapidly evolving markets and technologies and shortened product life cycles, product innovation projects must hit moving targets and change their focus continually during the course of a project. These demands have become especially challenging in the competitive markets for technology-intensive industrial products, which require huge investments and long development times.