The impact of the fuzzy front end on newproduct development success in JapaneseNPD projects

is explored. Our conceptual model is based on the information-processing perspective. A structualequation model was fitted to data from 497 NPD projects from Japanese mechanical and electricalengineering firms to test the proposed model.The empirical analysis found support for all hypotheses except for one. Our study suggests that anearly reduction of market and technical uncertainty and a draft initial planning prior todevelopment have a positive impact on NPD project...