This article introduces a comprehensive product development strategy to transform ideas into commercial products. Although there is abundant literature on product development tools and innovation theory, the inconsistency of results in previous studies in innovation theory has not produced compatible theories that can be put into practice. To help overcome this problem, grounded theory was used to build a novel and holistic strategy that connects and relates current product development tools with marketing research, value chain, business process management, and innovation theory. The resulting strategy combines a series of product development tools that can help practitioners to easily identify customer requirements, to develop ideal solutions, and to deploy solutions. The proposed strategy was applied in the wood products industry with successful results. It is expected that this product development strategy will help researchers and practitioners better integrate theory and practice in innovation research.
Contributor Notes
The authors are, respectively, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Wood Sci. and Forest Products, College of Natural Resources and Environment, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg (quesada@vt.edu); Director of Research and Development, Southern Virginia Higher Education Center, South Boston, Virginia (davidkenealy@svhed.org); and Director and Professor, Louisiana Forest Products Development Center, Louisiana State Univ. Agric. Center, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge (RVlosky@agcenter.lsu.edu). This paper was received for publication in October 2010. Article no. 10-00052.