Discovering Product Innovation Potential within Existing Product Architectures

New and innovative products are drivers for successful and sustainable growth of companies. Only a continuous stream of innovations can defend established market segments and create new markets for the company. Especially for European companies, innovations offer the opportunity for differentiation against competitors and therewith help to consist the present cost pressure mainly coming from Asian countries. Thereby, innovation inherent risks regarding limited product success, longer development times and quality lacks threaten the success of the innovation process. With this paper, a new approach is introduced, which aims at the reduction of the risks in the innovation processes. This is realized by shifting the focus from a customer requirement driven innovation screening to a product portfolio based innovation approach. The idea is to identify innovation opportunities within existing portfolios to maximize the use of existing company capabilities.