Uncertainty management in the front end of innovation development

When companies are creating new business - or innovations - they are also stepping towards an unknown future, which includes several uncertainties. Therefore, the management of uncertainty in the development of technological innovations has been studied with a focus in the fuzzy front end stage of innovation development process. The development of innovations, which will be new to the company or even new to the world, is always very challenging and risky because of uncertainty in many aspects of the development and commercialization processes. Tools and procedures used for the management of incremental innovation development, exploiting current lines of business, may not give much help in the case where one aims to deliver a product, process or service with unprecedented performance features. The new business development cases presented in this paper represents all different approaches. All cases started from an idea of new business opportunity, but the operative development of new innovation (business) applied totally different approach for uncertainty management: one case followed the traditional approach in where concept development was succeeded by new product development, in one case the technology of innovation was already available in-house but the new business creation required new kind of strategic offering planning for the company and in one case new technology necessary for the new business was taken over by an acquisition. This paper also describes a risk management based practical approach in supporting the decision-making of commercialisation related issues in the front end. The linkage of the front end and commercialisation phases of the innovation process is important in order assure that the opportunities and uncertainties related to commercialisation are taken into consideration during the first steps of the new business creation.