The Role of Early Prototypes in Concept Development: Insights from the Automotive Industry

The early phases of new product development have become an area of increasing research interest during the past decades. The vast majority of researchers agree that the potential for the most substantial impact on the innovation outcome lies in the execution of the early phases. In this paper, the early phases of the new product development process in seven automotive OEMs is studied. The present work discusses in general terms the findings from the sample of companies, as well as two in-depth reviews of recent product innovations launched by one of the OEMs; using semi-structured interviews. In these case studies, prototypes were identified to play a particularly important role with regard to: 1) enabling the team to explore various concepts and reduce (mainly) technical uncertainty, 2) communicating and gaining (financial) support from internal decision makers and 3) providing detailed characteristics in order to gain a deeper understanding of the product requirements. Based on these findings, it is concluded that the role of prototypes as enabling tools for innovation outcomes is just as important in the early product development phases as in the more commonly explored late phases.