A Strategic Approach to New Product Development

Abstract: Smart clothing represents the future of both the textile/clothing industry and electronic industry. As the convergence between these two industries brings large opportunities and challenges, it draws great attention and investment from many organisations in different fields, e.g. academic institutes, governmental organisations, private companies and laboratories. Currently, none of smart clothing applications is considered a full integration of high technology and fashion design, since most research attempts are focusing on solving technical problems such as integrating microchip and computer systems into clothing or overcoming wash-and-care issues. Consequently, the current applications are unable to attract the mass market. The imbalanced contribution from electronics and fashion industries and the users is the main problem of smart clothing development at this stage. Moreover, the research reveals that the strategic thinking which helps in defining true benefits or core values of smart clothing and may lead to better outcomes is still lacking. As the approach has recently changed from the technical one to a user-centred one, strategic thinking and a New Product Development (NPD) process addressing key elements from both industries are required. As a result, the key question is identifying and optimum balancing these key elements in the new approach and the NPD process. Nevertheless, fashion design and product design are established fields of their own, it is difficult to adopt or switch to the others ’ work methods. Therefore, the new approach and the NPD process should encourage the development team to think in a different way and go beyond their current creative boundaries. This paper illustrates th