Project Management

The Fast, Flexible and Fact based Front End: Examining Discovery the Not So Fuzzy Front End of Innovation

Donald G. Reinertsen was at Booz Allen Hamilton when he coined the term “Fuzzy Front End” in an article for PMI in the 1980’s. He did so because he thought there was something going on up there at the beginning of New Product Development but it was fuzzy. I interviewed him for an article a few years later. By then he had come to dislike the term, “Fuzzy Front End”. He felt that, after more study, there were a number of tools and processes in place (some for decades), that made the front end into a repeatable process. Together we changed the original premise to “Fuzzy Logic” for the article. That concept of Fuzzy Logic (sampling the environment, the market, technology, the competition, etc.) became the basic concept behind this important discovery stage and the basis for many popular branded processes like Hunting for Hunting Grounds™.

Never mind Reinertsen’s new thinking, the term “Fuzzy Front End” was catching on by the mid-90’s in the New Product Development community and perpetuated the myth of this stage as somewhat mystical. This webinar will attempt to demystify the new product discovery.