Activities 

Core Topics

The core topics covered by the NPDS_Lab include product strategy and portfolio management; user needs discovery and problem framing; ideation and concept selection; prototyping and design for manufacturing and service delivery; agile and stage-gate innovation processes; experimentation, A/B testing, and performance metrics; pricing and business model design; platform and ecosystem strategy; data-driven product management; intellectual property and appropriability; cross-functional collaboration among R&D, marketing, operations, and external partners; make–buy–ally decisions; organizational ambidexterity and innovation governance; diffusion and adoption dynamics; project management; and competition under technological change, including standards, complementors, and network effects.

The NPDS_Lab also addresses emerging technologies and methods that reshape product development. This includes additive manufacturing (e.g., 3D printing) and its implications for prototyping cycles, customization, design constraints, supply chains, and the economics of small-batch production. It covers digital twin tools for product development and optimization, including model-based engineering, simulation-driven design, and virtual testing, which enable faster iteration and risk reduction.

Recognizing that innovation increasingly occurs in distributed, digital environments, the lab examines security and protection challenges in product development. Topics include cybersecurity threats, the risk of spoofing and counterfeiting in the NPD process, and the leakage of industrial secrets. Coverage extends to secure-by-design principles, protection of design files and product data across internal teams and external partners, governance of access to prototypes and digital models, and managerial trade-offs between openness, speed, and protection in collaborative innovation settings.

Finally, the lab explores AI-enabled innovation and product development, investigating how machine learning and generative AI support opportunity identification, user insight extraction, concept generation, design-space exploration, automated testing, and the development of software-enabled product features. This includes the organizational and strategic implications of embedding AI capabilities into both the product development process and the products themselves.

The NPDS_Lab also considers sustainability, regulatory strategy, and global development dynamics, examining how lifecycle thinking, compliance pathways, and distributed teams shape product decisions and organizational capabilities in an interconnected world.