Four approaches for staffing and structuring a product development team to identify the crucial unmet needs of B2B customers

Purpose Offer a new model for identifying effective approaches to gathering, understanding and synthesizing information related to new product needs of B2B customers. Design/methodology/approach Arthur D. Little, together with the Eindhoven University of Technology, conducted in-depth interviews with over 30 product development leaders in 15 companies across multiple sectors. Findings When the team interacting with customers is structured appropriately the research showed that “getting it right” can lead to doubling of innovation success rates and have significant impact on R&D effectiveness. Practical implications By identifying the degree to which B2B customer needs are clear (expressed) or unclear (latent) and the degree to which technology needs are known (expressed) or unclear (latent), we can start to characterize the most appropriate skill set that a multifunctional product development team will need in order to develop a winning product. Originality/value Companies can use an innovative analysis framework to help make informed decisions about how best to organize their teams. The four approaches can be mapped to the four quadrants of a “Customer Needs/Technology Needs” matrix. The study concludes that the benefits are both strategically and financially significant.