Glossary

This section gives a glossary of important terms used in this blog.

Ansoff Matrix: matrix which defines different ways how a company can grow, based on characteristics of the market and the product.

Burn rate: a financial term which gives the amount of cash a company uses in a given time frame.

Business Case: a quantitative model predicting the financial return on an investment in a new product or service.

Cash Flow Curve: diagram which shows the cumulative cash flows of a project over time. The cash flow curve is used to control cash flow and investments for a project.

Customer Value: the amount of sales for a specific customer in a certain amount of time.

Customer Lifetime Value: the estimated amount of sales for a specific customer for his/her entire lifetime.

Deming Cycle: a quality tool for continuous improvement.

Design Thinking: a structured, outside-in, design approach, which helps you to create break-through products, based on deep customer understanding. This method can be applied to products, services, or wider business problems.

Digital twin: a software representation of a hardware product to be build. A digital twin is used for early quality simulations and to collect early feedback of customers before a product is built.

Economic profit: financial measure how much a company earns above its cost of capital.

Innovation: the sustainable creation of new solutions which meet market demand.

Integrated Quality Matrix: matrix which defines which quality method to apply in digital innovation, depending on the variability of the market and the volume of products or the number of customers of a service.

Invention: making something new possible, which could not be done before. The difference with innovation is, that it does not have to be commercially applicable.

Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM): a company which designs and produces electronics items, based on the buyer’s specification.  Such a company is also called a ‘contract manufacturer’.

Modular design: a design approach which subdivides a system into functional modules that can be independently created/adapted and then used in different systems to drive multiple functionalities. With modular design the individual modules can be built or upgraded independently over time, which gives it the additional flexibility to respond to different or changing market needs.

Net Promoter Score (NPS): The NPS measures promotion of products by the customers of a company.

Product Design: how a product looks or feels. The design of a product consists of the shape, colors, materials and finishing of a product.

Project Risk Analysis Template: a project tool which helps to define and list project risks, the severity of risks, how to mitigate them and who is responsible for that.

Quality: how well a product or service meets the requirements and specifications of the user and/or customer of the product or service.

Runway: a financial term which indicates the amount of time without external financing before a company is running out of cash.

Sales funnel: a tool which describes the different phases of the sales process.

Six Sigma: a technical, data-driven and statistical quality improvement method to achieve capable business processes, which are processes which meet, given its natural variation, the customer requirements.

Stakeholder Engagement Template: a project tool which helps to define a project’s stakeholders, their needs, requirements and how to involve them.

Total Quality Management (TQM): the continual process of reducing or eliminating defects in the supply chain, in manufacturing, improving the customer experience and ensuring that employees are up to speed with training.

Value Proposition: a product or service offering to a specific target group of customers.

V-model: a proven development method, which describes how to define and verify requirements for the development of products, platforms or services.

Voice of the Customer Tree: a development tool to formulate the key measurable requirements of a value proposition

Wiper method: method to prioritize projects based on the benefit and project effort of individual projects. With these method, projects with the highest benefit and lowest effort are prioritized over projects with lower benefit and more effort.