Managing the New Product Development Process: Design Theory and Methods

This class entails the execution of a major project—developing a product or service from idea through first pass prototype in a cross-disciplinary team of business, engineering and San Jose State University industrial design students. Teams will be coached by faculty and by designers from local firms. In-class time will entail a mixture of lectures, case discussions, guest speakers and group project work.

Students who take this class should be committed to participating fully in a team project. Teams typically meet for 1-3 hours per week outside class throughout the semester. (This is in addition to individual time spent preparing for class discussion.) Students must have flexible schedules to accommodate meetings with students outside Haas.

Abstract of Course Content and Objectives:

The course is a Management of Technology course offered jointly by the College of Engineering and the Haas School. We aim to have half MBA students and half Engineering students in the class, and facilitate students to form mixed teams for the development of their products. Students from the San Jose State University industrial design program will also participate on the teams. The course is introductory in nature, aimed at those who have not experienced a full product development cycle on a cross-disciplinary team in the past.

The focus of the course is management of new product development processes, from product definition through ramp-up of product manufacturing. Using a project in which students will be asked to design and develop a product or service of their choosing, we will teach processes for collecting customer and user needs data, prioritizing that data, developing a product specification, sketching and building product prototypes, and interacting with the customer during product development. The course is intended as a very hands-on experience in the product development process. (Note for those of you thinking about products or services you would like to develop you must be willing to share what you are doing on your project with the class, and you must be able to complete a first pass prototype within the 15-week semester). This is an ideal course for those who participated in the UNIDO summer program if you want to continue the development of products you worked on there.

See the MOT site for details.