The rise of internet business and new product development

I would say that the rise of the Internet business has dramatically changed the way of thinking about new product development. In particular, the impact of the new coronavirus has spurred its transformation. Also, while working from home is becoming established, we can see information on the world in a blink of an eye by giving keywords, regardless of whether it is good or bad, through notebook PCs and smartphones.

Many development engineers are becoming to misunderstand that momentary information becomes the theme of new product development and pretending as if they have spent a great deal of effort into creating the theme with a plausible reason.

Creating themes and identifying core technologies

What would you think about the value of a product created under such circumstances? A few years ago, I remembered some major alcoholic beverage company giving up on creating themes and continued to sell products based on information provided by advertising companies about their tastes and preferences for the year ahead. As a result, when the company’s performance was sluggish and dying, they must have been forced to reaffirm the importance of the original theme creation.

The reason is that to commercialise the created theme, the core technology that guarantees it is indispensable. Since the core technology is built up over a long period, it is essential to set some motivation to make it carried on.  In other words, I can say that theme creation would become “Emotional support” to overcome setbacks and build up the core technology.