The Characteristics of Innovative, Mechanical Products

Many new products fail upon introduction to the marketplace, but a few products are exceptionally successful, earning innovation awards and other benchmarks of success. To better understand the features of those innovative products, 197 award-winning products are analyzed to identify the characteristics that distinguish those products from the competition. For the analysis, a set of product-level characteristics are identified and organized into categories, which included functionality, architecture, external interactions, user interactions, and cost. Based on their innovation award citations, the products are analyzed with respect to the set of characteristics, and results are tabulated. Several award-winning products are also compared to competitive products on the shelves of major retail stores. On average, award-winning products display multiple characteristics of innovation. Overall, a vast majority (more than two-thirds) of the award-winning products exhibit enhanced user interactions, with a similar percentage displaying enhanced external interactions, compared with approximately one-third of products * This is a revised version of Paper Number DETC2009 -87382, published in the ASME IDETC Design Theory and Methodology Conference. 1 Email: [email protected] 2 Corresponding Author. Email: [email protected]. Phone: (512) 471-1985 3 [email protected]