12:00 – 1:00 pm

Hosted by: Center for Research Innovation

Presenter:

Tucker J. Marion, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, College of Business Administration/School of Technological Entrepreneurship

At both the undergraduate and graduate level, classes on new product development (NPD) have historically focused on best practices employed by large, established corporations.  These practices range from marketing to stage gates.  However, new ventures are unique in their lack of abundant resources – both in the human and financial capital – required to commercialize new innovation. Additionally, technology-focused new ventures span the R&D spectrum, from agile development and customer feedback industries like software to long-lead science like biotechnology. Within these industries, the methods and tools used in NPD can be unique.  As such, we have developed a transformational new product development course that addresses the similarities and differences of entrepreneurial NPD across the technology spectrum combined with an experiential micro-funded semester-long project run in conjunction with the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.  The results of this course are that the projects result in products that are more advanced at the preliminary design stage and are more customer oriented at the prototype stage.  Additionally, these projects are closer to micro or initial Angel investment than typical new product development course outcomes.