Innovation Management and New Product Development for Engineers, Volume I

Innovation Management for Engineers is intended for both practitioners and engineering students. Whereas "innovation" has become part of daily language, in practice realizing new product and new service development is a complex and daunting task for engineers and engineering managers. While most books on innovation management approach this topic from a managerial or economic perspective, this text takes the engineering processes as a starting point. To that purposes, it relates product design and engineering processes and their management to sources of innovation, collaboration with suppliers and knowledge providers (inventors and universities, for example) and users. The managerial aspects get ample attention as well as the economic aspects in the context of product design and engineering. Moreover, the book includes a chapter on intellectual property and patents, which are becoming more important in specific industries. For this wide range of topics, it is the intent to provide both theoretical underpinning and practical guidance. Engineering students and practitioners will benefit from this book by not only understanding the key mechanisms for innovation, but also by the practical guidance it offers. To that purpose, diagrams, models, methods and steps guide the users to see more return out of innovation projects.