EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In a globalised world, the market moves fast and every day new ideas and products are presented. In order to stay competitive, innovative firms have to be able to test ideas quickly and create a highly efficient product development process. A comprehensive knowledge of the available methods, that can provide proper testing and evaluation of these ideas, is key in reaching this goal. The presented research shows that this knowledge can be provided most efficiently in form of a structured Toolkit.

Assignment

Zumtobel Group aims to be an innovative market leader in the area of IoT (Internet of Things). To strengthen their position on the fast-changing market, the company has to be able to develop and evaluate new ideas in the product development process fast and efficiently. The given assignment was conducted in two main parts: identification of problem areas and possible improvements. Zumtobel's product development process concerning innovative ideas was analysed to identify possible areas of improvement. Following comprehensive research on the current methods, Zumtobel´s employees were interviewed about their daily work, experienced problems and their view on possible improvements. This allowed the results to be evaluated and clustered.

Results

The following findings were clustered by the nature of their problems:

• Internal Communication Issues:

• Top-down:originating at the management level, such as:
  - allocation of competences and resources,
  - insufficient sharing of information

• Bottom-up:originating on an employee level, such as:
  - lack of error management culture, idea selection,
  - cost calculation of software products

• External Communication Issues:

• Stakeholder-inclusion:with Zumtobel´s stakeholders, are:
  efficient gathering and implementation of feedback

Proposal

Three alternative approaches to increase innovation were investigated: General Guidelines, Individual Case Approaches and a so-called "Toolkit". The given criteria clearly indicated that the latter is the most suitable for Zumtobel Group.

The Toolkit aims to support the development process of innovative products by providing a database of available methods. Easy access to this structured hub of know-how will leave the company aware of all available options. The greatest advantage, however, is the gradual improvement of the Toolkit through the input of user experience in the form of reports. Three main parts of the Toolkit method are Prototyping, Testing and Feedback generation. Each of these consist of several applicable Tools and their respective properties, such as the required resources, their application and data handling ability. This ensures that the company can act highly efficient as well as performant in every single stage of the development process. The implementation of such a Toolkit should always be supervised by a company-internal worker for fast and easy support. Furthermore, the Toolkit should be introduced through the presentations of Tools and Workshops for practical use. The vital part of feedback can then be used to improve the Toolkit even further. Through this elevated level of clarity and information accessibility, error management and idea selection as well as efficient feedback handling can be improved as a direct result.

Cooperation Partner

• Zumtobel Group AG
  Höchsterstraße 8
  6850 Dornbirn
  Österreich

Contact Person

• Georg Terlecki-Zaniewicz
  g.terlecki-zaniewicz@zumtobelgroup.com
  www.zumtobelgroup.com

Student Team

• Abrosimova Natalia

• Brejla Bernhard

• Fally Lukas

• Fischer Aurelia

• Kirchmayr Katharina

Project-Manager

• Philip Bradonjic

• Barbara Mehner