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The Internet of Things as a source for improving the new product development process

Westerbeek, Dennis (2016) The Internet of Things as a source for improving the new product development process.

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Abstract:With 50 billion connected in 2020 the Internet of Things (IoT) can be named the new ‘big thing’. With its ability to get new insights in customer behavior and product performance it is a huge source of competitive advantage. This study reveals the impact the Internet of Things can have on the new product development process. Many authors have already done research in both fields but none of them clearly describes the relation the two topics can have. Therefore this report integrates IoT in the front end of the new product development process. By studying different literatures and interviewing some experts this paper tries to create a clear new product development model, in which IoT is integrated. The impact new products have on a firm’s performance is big (30% of a firm’s profit). However some challenges arise in the current used methods. In order to find the bottlenecks in this process the activities and success factors have been identified. It turned out that firms have the biggest influence in the predevelopment stages of the process, which is mainly concerned with identifying customer needs and generating ideas. Besides that costs rise when moving further in the process. Therefore the front end is the phase in which firms should put much effort in. However a challenge arises when analyzing this phase. It takes much time to come up with ideas, many ideas are needed, and many firms fail at identifying existing and potential customer needs. By integrating the Internet of Things in products the way new products and services are created gets a new dimension. Products contain sensors that are able to track product usage and provide performance data that couldn’t be discovered before. This ability adds a new stage to the front of the well-known Stage-gate® model: the data collection stage. Sensors in new products are the new source of continuous product and service improvement as it can gather real-time data. The result of the addition of this stage is that the Stage-Gate® transforms from a straight model to a virtuous model.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:International Business Administration BSc (50952)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/69966
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