Toward identifying the inventive templates of new products: A channeled ideation approach

New product ideation might be improved by identifying and applying certain well-defined schemes derived from an historical analysis of product-based t rends, termed "templates." These templates might contribute to the understa nding and prediction of new product emergence. The authors derive templates in a study that maps the evolution of product changes by adapting a set of intrinsic operations originally designed to uncover hidden logical pattern s in technological inventions. They find that the majority of new product v ersions can be accounted for by as few as five templates, The authors defin e the five templates and show that they derive from six elementary (first p rinciple) operators. A procedure for using the dominant template, termed "A ttribute Dependency," is outlined, followed by a report of two experiments examining its usefulness in the context of product ideation.