Launching a new product to the market successfully is how a company survives and thrives. However, it is one of the most complicated and complex procedures that involves a cross team, inter-disciplinary collaboration, countless cycles of iterations and testing before deciding to push the product to the market. The situation was even worse for start-ups with limited resources, manpower, and expertise. Often, they faced immense uncertainties by targeting to a market niche that would likely to be immature and newly emerged, in an effort to establish their market shares and scale from there. This thesis covers the first half of New Product Development, i.e. New Product Conceptualization, the stage where every product / service company would venture, where most decisions could be made to min...[ Read more ]

Launching a new product to the market successfully is how a company survives and thrives. However, it is one of the most complicated and complex procedures that involves a cross team, inter-disciplinary collaboration, countless cycles of iterations and testing before deciding to push the product to the market. The situation was even worse for start-ups with limited resources, manpower, and expertise. Often, they faced immense uncertainties by targeting to a market niche that would likely to be immature and newly emerged, in an effort to establish their market shares and scale from there. This thesis covers the first half of New Product Development, i.e. New Product Conceptualization, the stage where every product / service company would venture, where most decisions could be made to minimize costs of change in later cycles and situation could be assessed to proceed or to cancel. This process is discussed and illustrated in the framework of Stage-Gate Model that the focus was on developing a motion-sensing wearable technology product called Fit-Kick from scratch by a Hong Kong High-tech Start-up, in the novel wearable technology industry for sports performance training and rehabilitation. Methodologies were screened and selected from various product design and design thinking disciplines, to be achievable and executable by start-ups in an iterative manner fast. The final deliverable is a prioritized list of attributes desired by target segments for the tech team to develop the version of the product for manufacturing and launch.