Front End of Innovation: An Integrative Literature Review

Abstract

The beginning of the innovation process also known as FrontEnd of Innovation (FEI) is an important contributor to the successfuldevelopment of new products and the business success. The present studyaims at giving an overview of how the FEI concept has been handled overthe years, by identifying the focus of the research conducted in this domainknowledge. To this end, this study unfolds an encompassing perspectiveby developing an analysis of existing publications against two FEIReference Models. This analysis comprised of the compilation, selection,and review of the content of 169 publications concerning the Front End ofInnovation. The period of analysis covered all years until 2015. Evidenceshows that this topic has received greater attention in the recent years bothregarding depth and the number of publications. However, there are stillpending gaps in the literature that are highlighted in this paper. The topicsaddressing organisational issues were the ones that received moreattention.