Organising and managing the fuzzy front end of new product development

In this article preliminary design propositions are developed to organize and manage the fuzzy beginning of the Front End (FE) of New Product Development (NPD). These preliminary design propositions are based on the literature and on cross-case analyses of five case-studies. They include the proposition to organize the Fuzzy Front End (FFE) around the three basic processes option generation, option development and option screening and to use clearly distinct management regimes for the various processes of the FFE, the FE and of main stream NPD itself