Evaluating Probabilities of Technical And Commercial Success And Using Them In Screening New Product Ideas

Abstract

The screening of new product ideas is perhaps the most critical activity in innovation process and development of new products, the process is associated with uncertainty and complexity.Probabilities of technical & commercial success which represents uncertainty associated with R & D projects are used in evaluating project index models and some expected benefit/cost ratios. These probabilities were usually subjective expectationsof R & D teams. This paper based on a hypothesis that the success of new products in the market is due to the acceptablevalues of probabilities of technical & commercial success in screening stage.The purpose of this paper is concerned with introducing a modified method for evaluating probabilities of technical & commercial success of new product ideas, using average weighted scoring method instead of inaccurate subjective expectations, after developing a set of suitable criteria for evaluation of each probability as an effortfor getting unique estimations of probabilities of success, then using them in screening of new product ideas, and also can be used in project index models and other expected benefit/cost ratios. The utility of the approach in screening of new product ideas in an industrial organization was illustrated in a hypothetical example.