Innovation product development is a product development methodology that borrows from digital product engineering processes and applies them to business innovation. The goal is to produce product innovations that meet user needs and to improve products for real-world use. Often building upon the agile development methodology, innovation product development transforms new ideas into useful products.
Companies that shift to an innovation product development method also shift company culture to one that supports continuous improvement and innovation. This change in focus, along with adequate development tools, can help teams rapidly build minimally viable innovative products. Accelerating the development cycle means new innovative products enter the market faster than through traditional incremental development methodologies while also reducing cost. The rapid development process allows companies to more quickly respond to market demands.
Innovation product development accelerates the product development lifecycle by speeding the digital product development process from discovery to launch. When combined with the right digital tools, the product development process allows for rapid prototyping and continuous feedback. The innovation development process includes regular review of customer data and feedback. Rather than separating development from user experience design, a multi-discipline team collaborates to solve problems with existing products based on customer feedback or problem statements.
What are the advantages of using innovation product development?
- Speed digital product development. Test business ideas with rapid prototyping. Leverage APIs and low code environments to quickly test new features or services.
- Explore innovation for existing products. Innovation product development can be used to improve an existing product line too. A successful product must change over time to meet the needs of its customers. Quickly responding to customer needs is possible with a shorter development cycle as is used for innovation product development methodology.
- Streamline product/service development and reduce costs. Reduce product and service development costs by using a more streamlined innovation product development methodology that includes interdisciplinary collaboration.
- Improve long term innovation efforts. Adopting the innovation product development methodology can improve long term product development efforts because overall costs can be reduced while time to market is shortened as well.
- Continuous improvement. Innovation product development involves a continuous improvement approach to product and service development. New data and feedback can be used to determine how to improve and can be implemented quickly.