Idea generation techniques in an industrial market

There is a dearth of published research on the assessment of idea generation techniques. Helps to rectify this and examines idea generation techniques within the new product development process by an in‐depth study of the measuring, checking and precision instruments industry (SIC 3710). Data were collected from 47 companies using telephone interviews. Over 80 per cent of manufacturing respondents claimed to use some form of idea generation technique in their new product development process for new product idea generation or problem solving purposes, with larger companies using more techniques than smaller ones. However, none of the companies’ last new product was initiated by the use of an idea generation technique. It is therefore difficult to justify the resources that idea generation techniques presently consume. The origin of most new product ideas was the customer.