This course counts toward the following majors: Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Marketing, Marketing Management

New product design drives healthy companies, allowing organizations to differentiate from their competition and stimulate growth with sensitivity to changing consumer needs, and assuring an enterprise a strategic competitive advantage. But if that basic concept and the need for successful new products is commonly understood, why do some organizations succeed while others fail? Even in organizations with some great historical successes, it is often easier to find many more failures. There is a methodology, driven by a structured process, that allows surety and greater success in the development of new products. This course teaches that process for any student who may have the role of product manager, assuming that role includes new-product development. Areas of study include an overview of design and development including distinguishing factors for successful products, organizational structure for success, organizing the project into the appropriate phases and gates with go/no-go criteria, and developing a proposal format. The format will be from a consulting point of view (whether one is working as a consultant or with a consultant solving development programs) while assuring the manager a structure when working within one's own organization. Students will learn a basic knowledge of manufacturing techniques in order to more clearly speak and understand the language when working with engineers, industrial designers and production people, critical skills for those in a manufacturing-based organization or who deal with manufacturers. This mini-course is not intended to assure the manager proficiency as a designer, but rather to help the manager understand and manage the process of design and development in an efficient and professional manner.