A sector-specific approach for new product idea generation

Summary form only given as follows. The innovative knowledge for new product is the hallmark of commercial success. The idea generation process, however, is an exploratory and heuristic exercise and thus hard to systematize or standardize. In this article, we present a systematic scheme for idea generation, comprising such ways as additive, subtractive, change, substitutive, converse and concurrent approach. We then conduct a statistical analysis, goodness-of-fit, to identify the correlation between idea generation approaches and industrial sectors. The results may provide a useful framework for designing industry specific knowledge generation system.