How diversity management supports the fuzzy front end of innovation

The capability to develop customer oriented products unerring and place them in an adequate time with acceptable costs on the market is a crucial factor for companies. This paper discusses diversity management as one possibility to react to these challenges in the fuzzy front end of innovation. In an intensive literature review challenges of the fuzzy front end and general recommendations were identified. These recommendations led to an analysis of potential benefits of diversity with focus on innovation. Thereby overlapping points to the fuzzy front end have been perceived. To benefit from the potential of diversity in the fuzzy front end a model, regarding the fields of human resource management, innovation management and project management, for a pertinent diversity management was developed and is described in this paper.