| The economy,especially manufacturing industry, in China is facing great challenges when human-resource intensive industries are losing competitiveness. In order to implement innovation-driven development strategy,enterprises are eager to improve the capacity of independent innovation. Therefore, how to improve the performance of new product development (NPD) has become the focus of business and research institute. Product innovation is a high input, high-risk activities, the success rate of the product development has long been hovering at a low level.To improve the innovation capacity of enterprises and to improve the performance of the product development, the key questions lie on the "fuzzy front end"process.This paper would use theoretical modeling, empirical analysis and inductive and deductive research tools to fulfill the goal of the research topic.Firstly, it will analyze theoratically the characteristics, activities and performance measurement of Fuzay Front End (FFE). Furthermore, exploring the effect mechanism of FFE on the performance of NPD on the basis of the analysis of the critical factors of FFE would give rise to the construction of theoratical framework and hypothesis.The model and hypotheses will support the exploration of the effect mechanism between FFE and NPD. After the analysis of more than one hundred data from Chinese enterprises through questionaires and deep investigations, we find out that the factors of FFE and the performance of NPD are positively related. Most of the hypotheses are supported by the empiraical study. The hypotheses which are not supported will be analyzed reasonablly based on theories and practices in China.The research will help to enrich the the theory of Fuzzy Front End (FFE)of product innovation and raise the set of suggestions directing to the innovation practice and present the theoratical guidelines to the product innovation practice of Chinese companies through this research. |
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