Managing New Product Development and Innovation: A Microeconomic Toolbox (New Horizons in the Economics of Innovation series)

Managing New Product Development and Innovation provides a new approach to the microeconomics of innovation by measuring the technical quality of new products and guiding the managers of innovation and technology in the central considerations of today's knowledge-based companies.

The volume features a selection of practical microeconomic tools for managing new product development and innovation. By quantifying product features and evaluating the costs and market value of improvements, a simple yet powerful conceptual framework is created. Using this framework, creative business models can be built, along with innovative products, services and processes that achieve marketplace success.

The authors address five key questions facing managers of knowledge-based companies:

• Which new features should be added to existing products?
• Which radically new features should be innovated?
• How can marketing and R&D be integrated?
• How can the value of brand names be estimated and optimized?
• How can the sophistication of product technology be measured - both at a given point in time and between two points in time?

This path-breaking volume will be essential reading for managers of innovation, and will be warmly welcomed by teachers and advanced students with an interest in innovation and industrial economics.

The late Hariolf Grupp, formerly Deputy Director, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (FhG-ISI), Karlsruhe, Germany and Professor, Faculty of Economics and Management, Universität Karlsruhe (TH), Germany and Shlomo Maital, Academic Director, TIM-Tel Aviv, Israel and Senior Researcher, S. Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology, Technion, Haifa, Israel