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290 CHAPTER 8 • PRoduCT And sERviCE dEvEloPmEnT And oRgAnisATion
Prototyping and final design

Often ‘close-to-final’ designs are ‘prototyped’. Partly the next stage in the design activ-
ity is to turn the improved design into a prototype so that it can be tested. This may be
to learn more about the nature of the proposed product or service but often it is also to
reduce the risk inherent in going straight to market. Product prototypes may include
clay models of car designs and computer simulations, for example. Computer simula-
tions can be used as service prototypes but also can include the actual implementation
of the service on a pilot basis. Many retailing organisations pilot new products and
services in a small number of stores in order to test customers’ reaction to them.

Developing the operations process
Most models of product and service development assume that the final stage will
involve developing the operations processes that will eventually produce the designed
product or service. Although we dealt with process development in the previous chap-
ter, it is important to stress again that, in practice, produce/service development on
the one hand and process development on the other are inexorably linked. Placing
this stage at the end of the development process, however, does reinforce the idea that,
generally speaking, if the development process is intended to design products and ser-
vices that will fulfil a market need, then process decisions can only take place after some
product or service characteristics have been decided.

Product and service development as a funnel

Although stage models, such as we illustrated in Figure 8.8, are useful in identifying the
activities that must at some time take place within the overall development activity,
they do not form a strict set of stages to which the development process must conform.
In reality, stages may merge, the sequence of stages may vary and, almost always, the
development process recycles back and forth between the stages. But the underlying
ideas behind such stage models are widespread. For example, a common method of
describing the product or service development process is to liken it to a funnel. The
mouth of the funnel, being wide, can accommodate many alternative designs for the
product or service. Indeed, theoretically, there will always be an infinite number of ways
in which the benefits required from a product or service design can be delivered, even
if some are only minor variants on each other. As the development process progresses,
some design operations are discarded. There may be formal ‘filters’ at various points
in the funnel whose sole purpose is to exclude some of the options. These filters often
represent ‘screens’, which evaluate alternative designs against criteria of market accept-
ability, technical capability, financial return and so on. Eventually, only one design
option remains, which is then developed into its final form. The whole process moves
from a broad concept capable of infinite interpretation at one end of the funnel to a
fully formed and specified design at the other.
Just as the stage model in Figure 8.8 was a simplification, so is the concept of the
development funnel. Do not expect that all product and service development will con-
form to the obvious and regular funnel shape, as shown in Figure 8.6(a). Most develop-
ments do not look like this and, more to the point, nor necessarily should they. Rather
than see the funnel as a prescription for how development should be, it is better to
see it as a metaphor for the design process that can be reshaped to reflect how the
development process itself can be designed. The implication of this is that, even if an

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