A hybrid-approach to model design and development processes and the evaluation of innovation opportunities

Complexity and uncertainty are crucial for firms as far as product and process innovation and development contexts concerned. These contexts must be analyzed in depth to produce knowledge elements that should be used to reduce complexity and uncertainty and to manage innovative and unstructured situations. Firms need tools that allow these knowledge elements to be acquired and structured and new knowledge representations to be created and proposed in communication contexts, in order to become shared and operational models. The paper presents a hybrid-approach, which integrates some problem identification and structuring methods in uncertainty management and decision aiding procedures. The role of this approach, its results, the potentialities and its limits are analyzed in relation to different decision contexts and above all in relation to a recent application in a firm that designs and produces electronic transducers.