The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development

THE PDMA GLOSSARY FOR NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

© Product Development & Management Association, 2004, reprinted with permission.

Accidental Discovery:

New designs, ideas, and developments resulting from unexpected insight, which can be obtained either internal or external to the organization.

Adoption Curve:

The phases through which consumers or a market proceed in deciding to adopt a new product or technology. At the individual level, each consumer must move from a cognitive state (becoming aware of and knowledgeable about a product), to an emotional state (liking and then preferring the product) and into a conative or behavioral state (deciding and then purchasing the product). At the market level, the new product is first purchased by the innovators in the marketplace, which are generally thought to constitute about 2.5 percent of the market. Early adopters (13.5 percent of the market) are the next to purchase, followed by the early majority (34 percent), late majority (34 percent) and finally, the laggards (16 percent).

Affinity Charting:

A "bottom-up" technique for discovering connections between pieces of data. An individual or group starts with one piece of data (say, a customer need). They then look through the rest of the data they have (say, statements of other customer needs) to find other data (needs) similar to the first, and place it in the same group. As they come across pieces of data that differ from those in the first group, they create a new category. The ...