Technology Push and Market Pull

Many radical product innovations seem to be based on new
technology. For example, pocket calculators, personal computers
and many other new electronics-based products were made possible
by the development of the microprocessor chip. However, as
we have seen in the success and failure stories, people's willingness
to buy new products is the ultimate deciding factor; if people do
not want the product then it fails. There are also many examples of
new product development that do not depend on new technology
but on recognizing what people want or need, whether that is
recyclable packaging, stacking hi-fi systems or dish washers, etc.
There are therefore two strong aspects to new product devel
opment: the push that comes from new technology and the pull of
market needs.
These two aspects are usually called technology push and
market pull. Technology itself, of course, does not do any pushing;
that comes from the developers and suppliers of the new technology,
and from the makers of the new products. In practice, a lot
of new product development is influenced by a combination of
both technology push and market pull.
Many companies prefer to work on the market-pull model,
using market research to identify customers' wants and needs. The
technology-push view, on the other hand, emphasizes that
innovations can create new demands and open up new markets.
Market research usually cannot identify demands for products that
do not yet exist.
This has been recognized particularly by those companies that
try to plan new product development in terms of both technological
seeds and customer needs; success depends on matching
seeds with needs. However, even when a market need and a
technology seed can be matched, and a new product concept
identified, there is no guarantee that a product will actually be
developed. It may require far too much financial investment, for
example, or a product champion may not emerge or be successful
within the company. Another reason is that some product
concepts are actually suppressed by companies and organizations
that have a strong vested interest in maintaining the markets for
their existing products. This is particularly true of industries with
a heavy capital investment in the continued production of a
particular product type. The motor industry, for example, failed to
support the development of alternative vehicles, such as electric
cars, until it began to see such innovations as potentially important
to its survival.
Some opportunities for new product development lie in the
region where an already-developed technology can meet an
undeveloped market, while others lie in the region where new
technology can be applied in an already developed market
(Figure 88). A third region, for the most radical (and risky) product
innovations, is where new technology and new market opportunities
might be developed together. The Sony Walkman and
Sinclair C5 were both examples of the latter.

Engineering Design Methods
Strategies for Product Design
THIRD EDITION
Nigel Cross
The Open University, Mi/ton Keynes, UK
JOHN WILEY & SONS, LTD
Chichester- New York. Weinheim • Brisbane. Singapore. Toronto