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Can Smart Homes contribute to the New Product Development (NPD) process?

Mortazawy, Ali (2018) Can Smart Homes contribute to the New Product Development (NPD) process?

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Abstract:Internet of Things (IoT) devices generate a vast amount of data which can be utilized for many commercial purposes. The Smart Home is one of the most promising application domains of IoT. Data obtained from Smart Homes (Smart Home data) can provide insights into customer behavior and product usage. Consecutively, this can be used to identify customer needs. However, firms are not actively using smart (home) data for their New Product Development (NPD) processes. Hence, this research studies to what extent data obtained by IoT devices and specifically, smart home devices, could contribute to the following key success factors of the NPD process: (1) maximized fit with customer requirements (2) minimized development cycle time (3) controlled development costs. With the help of a literature review and an expert study, this study determined that smart (home) data assists in identifying customer needs but not necessarily reduces development cycle time and costs. Through smart (home) data, the ability to identify needs and give corresponding support will be more sustainable, continuous, fast, and easy. Also, with the right algorithm and analytics, the development cycle time will be faster. The development costs will be higher at the beginning and later decrease as more data becomes available. Moreover, bottlenecks in the Smart Home field were found, due to lack of standardization of smart home systems, the data obtained is very fragmented which leaves quite a distorted picture of customer behavior. Besides, on one hand, the firms which install and support Smart Home systems like telecom companies have no intention of harvesting and exploiting its data and on the other hand, the innovative companies whom the data could be useful for, have no direct access to it. They have to go through a difficult process to procure this privacy sensitive customer data from the telecom companies.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:54 computer science, 85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:International Business Administration BSc (50952)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/75374
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