Recurring ideation activities

Deriving from the event structure analysis, external parties appear to exert a substantial influence on the ideation stage. Also previously developed products appear to have an impact. Table 5 depicts the actors and NPD activities that were conducted in each of the projects during the ideation stage. The outcome of process in the ideation stage is not depicted, as ideation was always followed by evaluation that was conducted by the new product group.

Table 5: NPD activities in the ideation stage

A total of five categories of recurring activities can be abstracted from the ac-tions that have been undertaken in the ideation stage. These activities appear to constitute routines through which new product concepts are developed as they share a common blueprint in the way in which the organization responds to the need to develop new products. Specifically, these routines are: 1) further development of existing product or prototype, 2) execution of a pre-study, 3) initiating collaboration with a third party, 4) initiating a project to match exist-ing customer needs and 5) initiatexist-ing a development of a prototype. Next, I will describe these routines in more detail.

Further development of existing product or prototype appears in a number of NPD projects. These kinds of projects were largely set in motion by improvement of a product, where the degree of improvement led it to be a standalone solution. For instance, CK 12 aviation radiophone was a project where the old CK 11 was augmented with a digitalizer. In the same vein RS restructuring was a project that commenced from improving the deficiencies left in RS 16 but ended up being a separate project as the improvements were so significant.

The routine is initiated by the new product group, which then instructs the NPD department to initiate the further development of an existing product or a prototype. This routine seldom appears alone (only in the case of electronic microscope) but rather is a routine through which NPD staff is provided with a starting point for a project and direction how to proceed with the develop-ment. It appears to serve two main functions which are: 1) effective use of pre-vious prototypes and projects and 2) indicating a starting point of a pro-ject/existing product from which NPD staff can commence a project.

Further development of existing products has received attention in the new product development literature and therefore it can be redescribed through extant literature. This procedure was identified in the methodology section as being necessary for giving theoretical grounding for the components of the mechanisms. These kinds of NPD projects can be characterized as incremental innovations where existing products are adapted, refined and/or enhanced (Garcia and Calantone 2002). Thus, further development of existing products is an act of local search where search depth is increased to make the search activity more predictable and decomposable into smaller tasks (Katila and Ahuja 2002).

Execution of a pre-study was a frequently used mean to approach NPD and manifested in different forms. These studies were initiated because of the need to gauge the state of technological development in a specific area, to find directions for further development, or to understand market potential. For instance, in the CORA project, the project commenced through an in-depth literature review to find out different ways to measure upper air winds. Specif-ically, the three main kinds of pre-studies used were: 1) studies on the used solutions and needed specifications, 2) literature reviews on possible solutions and 3) studies on the market potential/market research.

The impetus for these studies was to gain insight and approximate towards a product that could have technical and commercial potential. The new product

group always initiated the routine but a party deemed most suitable by the new product group conducted the pre-study. In most occasions this was the NPD department but external parties were also used to execute the pre-studies. The routine appears to serve three distinct functions: 1) generation of information for the management to evaluate the feasibility of the product, 2) giving direction to the project or 3) exploring new directions of development.

Through extant literature pre-studies could be redescribed as predevelop-ment activities. Predeveloppredevelop-ment includes activities such as defining the prod-uct concept and developing understanding of customer needs before the actual development starts (Cooper 1988; Khurana and Rosenthal 1997; Langerak, Hultink and Robben 2004). These activities have been suggested as being one of the factors that determine new product success (Cooper 1988; Evanschitzky et al., 2012; Henard and Szymanski 2001) and they could be conceptualized as being aimed towards boundary spanning search because the activities span beyond the technological boundaries of the company (Rosenkopf and Nerkar 2001).

Initiating collaboration with a third party occurred frequently during the period of inquiry. Vaisala conducted a large amount of collaborative NPD with different instances. These kinds of projects were mainly initiated by Finn-ish universities and research institutions such as VTT that offered Vaisala pos-sibilities for product development. For instance, ELSA was originally an idea developed in HUT and then further developed in Vaisala. Also, in one instance, a French company METOX offered Vaisala the opportunity to further develop their products.

The routine involves the new product group, the NPD department, and an external party. In most cases the new product group was offered an opportuni-ty to collaborate with a third paropportuni-ty. This opportuniopportuni-ty was usually evaluated and if the evaluation was positive the collaboration was started. During the collab-oration, there appears to be three primary modes of operating. The first mean of collaboration is that the third party provides a platform on which the Vaisala NPD can develop from, as was the case with METOX where Vaisala developed on the existing product of METOX. The second mean of collabora-tion is that Vaisala NPD department and the third party directly collaborate in the creation of the outcome as was the case with developing ELSA with HUT research team. The third way of operating is that the third party works under the supervision of Vaisala new product group and Vaisala new product devel-opment is involved in the develdevel-opment process only in the later stages of de-velopment.

The routine is almost always accompanied by a routine to develop a proto-type (the only occasions where this was not done was HATTARA). This ap-pears to be a way to hedge the risk of collaboration by doing a working proto-type as early as possible to enable evaluation of the business potential of the project.

The impetus for this routine is to tap into the technical knowledge and ideas of third parties. This is an issue already emphasized in the research and devel-opment plan set out for 1972-1982. Therefore, the routine provides new ideas

and concepts that can fall beyond the immediate competence areas of the company. For instance, HUMICAP is a good example of collaboration where an external party was able to come up with a solution that could not have been figured out within the focal company itself.

Collaboration with a third party has also received attention in academic lit-erature and it has been suggested to be undertaken to satisfy customer needs and to take advantage of market opportunities that the focal company alone cannot fulfill (Littler et al. 1995). Collaboration with universities and public institutions, as it the case in many of the NPD projects, has been studied wide-ly and they have been suggested to enhance the focal firms intensity of product innovations (Robin and Schubert 2013), providing assistance in problem solv-ing, improving understanding and providing sources of information for new projects (Bishop, D’Este and Neely 2011). Specifically, they enable the organi-zation to venture into organiorgani-zational boundary spanning (Rosenkopf and Nerkar 2001).

Initiating a project to match existing customer needs was how some NPD projects began. These kinds of projects were initiated by customers of the company that required new kinds of products from the company. For instance, the development of RS 21 and RS 24 radiosondes were initiated because cus-tomers were putting pressure on Vaisala to develop radiosondes that would work with the ground equipment of other manufacturers.

The routine is initiated by the new product group when a new customer need is identified and they direct the NPD department to start development project to fulfill this need. In many instances this meant the improvement of an exist-ing product to match customer needs. Overall the routine has a purpose of responding to an emerging customer need.

Matching customer needs through product development has received sub-stantial attention in the extant literature. For instance, Danneels (2002) pro-posed that product innovations stem from linking technological competences with customer competences. From a marketing perspective, this can be identi-fied as market sensing that enables the company to learn from its customers and in part customer linking through which the company aims to establish close communications with its customers (Day 1994).

Initiating the development of a prototype was a central routine in many NPD projects. This routine never appears alone and therefore its role is to actualize the outcomes of other routines into a materialized form so that they can be evaluated. In many occasions the goal of building a prototype was to test the technical feasibility of an abstract idea. For example, this was the case with SODAR, where the initial prototype was a failure but enabled steer-ing the future development to a new direction.

This routine was always initiated by the new product group and either car-ried out by the Vaisala NPD department or a third party. As such it provided the new product group better grounds for evaluating the product in the evalua-tion stage.

Prototype development has been identified as an NPD activity that can en-hance NPD performance by shortening development times (Barczak, Griffin

and Kahn 2009). Prototype development largely focuses on technical attrib-utes of the offering and involves turning the product idea into a high quality product (Harmancioglu, Droge and Calantone 2009). Therefore, the initial product idea is embodied into a prototype to see how the idea functions in practice. This enabled the demonstrating the efficacy of the proposed solution and evaluation of the project in part by the management (Clark and Wheel-wright 1993). Next I proceed into depicting the activities underlying the evalu-ation stage.