European Concept

An European Platform

European Concept Manifesto

European Concept is a Manufuture Sub-Platform. It is made of a community of companies, people and research organizations interested in taking proactive actions, aimed to identify and deal with new needs for products and services continuous innovation in today globalized markets. The European Concept community wants to:

• Develop new methodologies for the identification of the new, unexpected customer needs;
• Make the classical product offering approach evolve into a modern product/service vision that could take account of themes of increasing relevance, like product/service integrated design, sustainability, product/service lifecycle management;
• Develop an integrated European network with strong relations with other platforms (e.g. Manufuture) and initiatives (e.g. IMS) having a European relevance. 

European Concept aims to pro-actively contribute to collectively define an emerging R&D area dedicated to modify the present product innovation approach in products/services and to promote an industrial driven action and international cooperation. The essence of European Concept is to strengthen the culture of detecting and analyzing the users’ needs along the entire life-cycle of products, so that European industry can take advantage from the new opportunities in the global market.  

European Concept wants to advance from the present Product/Service Innovation approach (focused on (i) changing and modifying some product features by using creativity, (ii) competitors actions, (iii) market collective behaviors observation) to a new Product/Service Innovation approach. The new Product Innovation approach focus on Value propositions:

• Identification of real user needs (explicit, non explicit, indirectly connected);
• Identification of new technologies and innovative services for identifying new modalities to satisfy users expectations;
• Individual behavior observation.

The New Value propositions, targeting users’ needs through perceived value, need to be innovative, highly technological, integrated (foster innovative services, tangible goods and intangible features) and multipurpose.