ABSTRACT
Because of the drastic change in customer needs, the trend for shorter life cycles is increasing in organizations in terms of the importance of nding product development methods and technologies that can reduce development cycle time and cost. This inuences a direction to reduce the gap between true needs and expectations of the customers versus the developed product itself. One key indicator to improve is the success rate of newly developed products in the market (sales and prots). In the comparative performance assessment study regarding new products (PDMA Foundation 2004), the “best” companies have a success rate of 75.5%, while the “rest” of the companies average only a 53.8% success rate for newly introduced products. The rate of ideas that become successes in the market is 25% (1 out of 4) in the “best” companies and of 11% (1 out of 9.2) in the “rest” of the companies. The current challenges are related to improving the product development processes and reducing the gap between the nal products and services versus the market true needs.
