The product areas from the innovation and product strategies need to be built up into a new product development portfolio. The new product areas are categorised as shown in Table 2.8.


Table 2.8 Categories for new product areas

Type Description Level of innovation New product platform A completely new technology and/or market Very high, discontinuous New direction on present platform A new product line/product High, continuous New-to-the-world single product A single innovation not related to a platform, new technology Very high, discontinuous Revamping a product platform New focus, add new products, drop old products, another market High, continuous Product line relaunch New packaging, new image, change in product variety Moderate, continuous Product relaunch New packaging, new image, product change Moderate, continuous Product line extension Add new products Low, incremental Product improvement Improve attributes, use, image Low, incremental Product cost reduction Reduce costs of production, marketing Very low, analysis

There are many systems of categorising new product ideas, for example new-to-the-world, new product lines, additions to existing product lines, improvements and revisions, repositionings and cost reductions (Cooper, 1998). The categories in the table are useful for the food industry where the product mixes are large and there is continuous change to cope with supermarket wants.

Think Break 1. List last year's product development projects in your company and divide     them into the categories in Table 2.8. 2. Compare this with the previous year's product development projects     categorised in the same way. 3. Are they different or is there a typical pattern? 4. Do you think this pattern might change in the future?