Impact of abstraction levels in the FFE of innovation

Developing customer oriented products unerringly and bring them faster to the market than competitors is crucial for the survival of a company. This paper focuses on the Fuzzy Front End of Innovation because this phase has the greatest impact on the following product development project. A conceptual abstraction level model for the Fuzzy Front End is introduced and discussed. Introducing three different levels of abstraction with a functional description the paper argues how a broader solver base can improve the idea generation and solution finding in the very early phases of product development.