The aim of this paper is to describe front-end activities in practice and get first hints for effects of the front end on project outcome and the meaning of contextual factors. The results of an exploratory study of fourteen product development projects are contrary to the wide-spread opinion...

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...

In this paper, we report on the results of a large-scale study about typical front-end-related innovation practices in 553 Japanese mechanical and electrical engineering companies. We explore typical activities concerning the generation and assessment of new product ideas, the reduction of...

In a study of New Product Development (NPD) projects, the fuzzy front end ofinnovation is explored. The New Product Development process is a multistageprocess. Therefore, the study examines two sorts of impact that the fuzzy front endhas on the success of New Product Development: a direct impact...

In this paper, we are going to report on the results of an exploratory pieceof research about the typical front-end-related activities in 28 innovation projectscarried out by 14 German and 13 Japanese companies to reduce project uncertainty. Inall cases we observed a range of activities to...