Autor: Dominik T. Matt

The success rate of new products or services can be increased only by a consequent orientation at the customer value: the customer needs drive the buying decision! Existing methods for customer need determination are not suitable for the development of novel products or services: after all, we have to find out customers preferences about something that does not exist yet. In this paper a methodology is presented which helps to identify systematically the customer needs and the relative customer requirements and how to define on their basis the functional requirements for product development. A practical example helps to illustrate the successful application of the approach.

Growing competition, new technologies and global markets force companies to act in an increasingly fast and market-oriented way, leading inevitably to changes in organization and company culture. Rigid and function-oriented organizational structures will be substituted by flexible, project-oriented or even virtual organizations. Collaboration will change quickly according to the new requirements. Different people, whole enterprises or only parts of a company will be able to temporarily build virtual teams or companies, locally or within networks. Against the background of this fundamentally changing work environment, companies’ requirements regarding employees and the mechanisms of collaboration will substantially change. This paper gives a closer look at these new requirements and will highlight some possible future solution ideas.

In the last years of general economic depression, European small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) have compensated for the large enterprises’ loss in value and job creation. A trend towards a “pulverization” of the economic system from large to small companies could be noticed. On the other hand, growth is an economic prerequisite for sustainable business success. Must a SME therefore grow and become a large enterprise in order to succeed? Not necessarily. Business growth is not a perpetuum mobile; it is restricted by internal diseconomies of scale and scope caused by the increased complexity of large organizations. In this paper, a new approach is presented which shows how small and medium sized companies can realize sustainable growth without losing the advantages of a small organizational structure.