Software Support for the Fuzzy Front End Stage of the

Innovation Process: a Systematic Literature Review

Cleviton Monteiro1, Fabio Q. B. da Silva1, Daniel F. Arcoverde1, Henrique S. Ferreira1

1Center of Informatics, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil

{cvfm, fabio, dfa, hsf}@cin.ufpe.br

Agenda

• Context

• Researh Question

• Method

• Results

• Findings and implications

• Concluding remarks

Context

• Fuzzy Front End (FFE)

– Set of execution and evaluation activities

– The period between the oportunity identification to the decision

to product

• The best phase to promote enhancements in the

new product development process (NPDP)

Context

• Benefits in the use of software tools in other

business process

• There is some evidence that points to benefits in the

use of software tools

• Little is know about whether, how and why these

software tools improve the process

Objective

• Gather, analyze and present experimental evidence

about the use of software support tools in the FFE

• These evidences will assist industry practitioners that

need to make informed choices about software tool

use

Research Question

What are the benefits achieved by the use of

software tools in the fuzzy front end of innovative

product development?

Method

• Systematic Literature Review (SLR)

• Protocol

– Research Question in PICOC* structure• Population: the Fuzzy Front End of innovative product development

• Intervention: use of software tools in the fuzzy front end

• Context: open to any type of organization that makes innovation

• Outcome: the benefits of tool support, in particular of its features

• Comparison: NA

*PICOC - Population, Intervention, Context, Outcomes, Comparison

Method

• Protocol

– Search Strategya) Derive the major terms from the research questions using PICOC;

b) Identify a list of synonyms, abbreviations and alternate spellings;

c) Building search strings using AND and OR to include synonyms and

abbreviations;

d) Check the search strings built using steps a) to c) by running pilot searches;

e) Make adjustments if necessary.

(software* OR system* OR tool* OR program* OR application*) AND ("fuzzy front end" OR "fuzzy front-end" OR "innovation front

end" OR "innovation front-end" OR "front end * innovation" OR "front-end * innovation" OR "pre-development" OR predevelopment

OR "up-front homework" OR "up front homework" OR "upfront homework") AND ("innovative product*" OR "major product*" OR

"new product*" OR "radical product*" OR "breakthrough product*" OR "incremental product*" OR "sustaining product*" OR

"evolutionary product*" OR "product innovation" OR "product development")

Method

• Protocol

– Search Processa) Two researchers searched each of the selected sources using the same search string. This

was the primary search;

b) The studies found in the primary search were assessed by reading the title and, if necessary,

the abstract;

a) Irrelevant excluded and potentially relevant articles documented in a list

c) Relevant articles were independently evaluated (abstract, introduction and conclusion) by two

researchers by checking the inclusion criteria;

a) The lists of included and excluded studies were created

d) All the relevant works were read in full for data extraction and quality assessment;

e) The references included in the relevant works were listed and the steps ‘c’ and ‘d’ were

repeated for them. This was the secondary search.

The search was performed in 8 search engines

Method

• Protocol

– Study Selection• (i) Papers that are freely available for consultation through licenses permission

obtained from the Federal University of Pernambuco online access

• (ii) Work that fit in one of the categories defined

• (iii) Studies that show, primarily or secondarily, the benefits provided by

software that gives support to the FFE

• (iv) Studies that contain full and complete text, content, and results

• (v) Work that is written in English

• (vi) Work not duplicated

• (vii) In the case of doubt the word should be included

Method

• Protocol

– Data Extraction

• Designed to collect all information necessary to address

the issues of review– Fields: id, revision date, title, authors, study type, source (search engine), publish date,

published source, inclusion reason, related evidences (benefits of software tool use in

the FFE), additional info, references, quality assessment criteria, reviewer name and his

agreement

– Data analysis

• Constant Comparison Method– Grouping the similar benefits in higher level classes related to them

Results

Total 1090

Non-relevant 1042

Potentially relevant 48

Included 10

Excluded 20

Not available through UFPE’s accesses licenses 18

Primary Search

Secondary Search

Potentially relevant 22

Included 1

Excluded 7

Not available through UFPE’s accesses licenses 13

Results

Distribution over the years

Results

Distribution by source

The others were The Journal of Marketing Research, Creativity and Innovation Management, The

International Technology and Innovation Conference, The Computers in Industry and The Journal of

High Technology Management Research

Results

• Benefits

– (B1) process speed up

– (B2) cost reduction

– (B3) collaboration and communication

– (B4) quality of decision

– (B5) knowledge management

– (B6) risk reduction with patents

– (B7) creativity enhancement

Results

• Software Tools

– (C1) idea banks (including newsgroups and forums)

– (C2) idea generators

– (C3) decision support systems

– (C4) on-line brainstorming

– (C5) on-line surveys

– (C6) patent management systems

– (C7) real time chats

– (C8) multimedia prototypes

Results

Tool Category Outcomes

Idea Banks B1[8,27,28,29]; B2[8,20,29];

B3[20,28,29];

B4[29]; B5[28,29]; B6[28,29]

Idea Generators B7[24]

Decision Support Systems B4[7,8,21,22,29,31]

On-line Brainstorming B7[7]

On-line Surveys B1[30]; B3[30]

Patent Management Systems B6[8]; B7[8]

Real Time Chats B2[30]; B3[30]

Multimedia Prototypes B1[30]; B2[30]

Concluding Remarks

• Contributions

– Categories of tools used

– Benefits that can be achieved and what tools should be

adopted to acquire them

Concluding Remarks

• Limitations

– The data was collected from only 11 primary studies• Although this number is consistent with other reviews in software engineering, it may constitute

a limitation

– Only the clearly stated benefits were extracted from

studies• Avoids bias related to researcher’s assumptions and beliefs

• Precluded the identification of potential benefits that were only vaguely of indirectly mentioned

Concluding Remarks

• Future Work

– Interview specialists to identify qualitatively their opinion

about the benefits found in this study

– Some case studies and experiments with organizations

that use tools in their FFE

• Achieve more evidences

Software Support for the Fuzzy Front End Stage of the Innovation

Process: a Systematic Literature Review

Cleviton Monteiro1, Fabio Q. B. da Silva1, Daniel F. Arcoverde1, Henrique S. Ferreira1

1Center of Informatics, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil

{cvfm, fabio, dfa, hsf}@cin.ufpe.br

Thank you!

Software Support for the Fuzzy Front End Stage of the Innovation Process: a

Systematic Literature Review by Cleviton Monteiro, Fabio Q. B. da Silva, Daniel F.

Arcoverde, Henrique S. Ferreira is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-

NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Based on a work at the 5th IEEE International Conference on Management of

Innovation and Technology, Singapore, 2010.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available

at http://www.haseresearch.com