The Handbook of Technology and Innovation Management

3.6. Conclusion

Understanding customer needs is a crucial input into the innovation and new product development process, and at the same time, a very challenging endeavor. This chapter has attempted to review the literature relating to customer needs that spans several disciplines. As the discussion in this chapter implies, much of the published research related to customer needs has been concerned with the cross-fertilization of ideas and concepts across disciplines (see Figure 3.10). Consequently, progress in fully integrating a deep understanding of customer needs into the innovation process has been slow. But, this review also indicates that the boundaries between the various functions are coming down. There will always be a tradeoff between the expediency and cost efficiency of practical methods for understanding customer needs versus methods of obtaining a deeper understanding of needs that involve more effort and resources. There also seems to be several directions that academic research can explore in the future. In all cases though, the challenge will be to integrate across multiple disciplines. But, this is what makes the topic interesting!

Figure 3.10. The cross-fertilization of research on customer needs.