Proposal of Definitions and Quantitative Evaluation Methods for Exploration and Exploitation in Product Design and Development

Abstract

Recently, it has been said that ambidexterity of exploration and exploitation is necessary for organizations to sustainably meet the needs of society and users in the rapidly changing business environment. However, no design methodology has been established to balance them and respond to uncertain future needs. Toward achieving both exploration and exploitation in product design and development, this paper proposes their definitions and the quantitative evaluation methods for their degrees based on the definitions. In these methods, words related to product functions and numerical values related to product attributes were extracted from design documents, and their differences from past documents were evaluated. Furthermore, to verify the proposed methods, they were applied to past products, for which the relationship between exploration and exploitation has been clarified. The verification showed that the evaluation results were consistent with the relationship, indicating that the proposed methods were potentially applicable to the evaluation of the degrees of exploration and exploitation.