Innovation processes are developed for various reasons, e.g. formalization, communication or controlling of development activities. A big variety of innovation processes and especially for its early phase can be found in literature directly correlating with the amount of different reasons for creating a new model. With the increasing number of models, the main benefit of formalization is obsolete: a comparative description how product design is carried out in a company. This papers deals with the early phase, the product planning and conceptual design of the innovation process. The literature lacks an overview of a generic model of the early phase. In order to deal with different degrees of product novelty, there need to be a flexible model in which a product planer is able to adjust his or her project of a new product flexibly depending on the determined degree of product revision. Therefore, the authors propose a merged model from a state of the art literature review with detailed income and outcome needed for each phase of the early planning process. It provides the opportunity to opt for three different degrees of product novelty: new product development, the adjustment or adaption design and the variation design.     «

Innovation processes are developed for various reasons, e.g. formalization, communication or controlling of development activities. A big variety of innovation processes and especially for its early phase can be found in literature directly correlating with the amount of different reasons for creating a new model. With the increasing number of models, the main benefit of formalization is obsolete: a comparative description how product design is carried out in a company. This papers deals with th...     »