In one line: The funnel is the familiar picture of many fuzzy ideas narrowing into one launched product. It is useful, but the classic versions hide the hardest part: the “fuzzy front end,” where you work out what customers need.
Core idea
For decades, new product development has been drawn as a funnel: a wide mouth of ideas, progressively screened and refined, emerging as a launch. The image works because development really is a refinement process, from fuzzy thinking to a concrete product.
Gerry Katz argues that most published funnels are nonetheless lacking [1]. Early versions came from consumer packaged goods, where ideas were plentiful (a new soup flavor, a new toothpaste) and the work was mostly marketing: screening, positioning, advertising and forecasting. Those funnels under-describe the front end that matters most for technical products: finding the right opportunity and defining what customers need before anyone designs anything.
How it works
Katz’s alternative funnel has five stages, each defined by the questions it must answer:
| Stage | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| Discovery | What opportunity should we pursue? Who is the customer, and what are their big problems? |
| Definition | What detailed needs must we satisfy, and to what specifications should we design? |
| Design | Can we create better features or solutions than exist today, and describe them convincingly? |
| Development | Which features are worth investing in, and what will people pay for them? |
| Delivery | Can we reliably produce, sell and support it, and make money doing it? |
The first two stages make the fuzzy front end explicit. Getting through them takes market research, analytical and technical skill, discipline and intellectual honesty, plus a little luck.
In practice
Engineers tend to jump straight to the Design stage, because that is where their skills shine. The funnel is a reminder that a brilliant design built on an undefined need usually fails. A practical habit is to ask, before a design review, which of the five questions the team can actually answer with evidence and which it is assuming. The gaps are usually in Discovery and Definition.
Questions to ask yourself
- Which funnel stage is my project really in, and which stage do we act as if we’re in?
- What evidence do we have for the customer’s needs, beyond our own opinion?
- How many opportunities entered our funnel before this one won?
Connections
- The front end in detail: Opportunity Identification, Identifying Customer Needs, Voice of the Customer.
- The portfolio view: Product Planning. The formal phases: Product Development Process.
- Capabilities exercised: Vision, Inquiry, Decision Making.