The economic success of a company depends on their ability to identify the needs of customers and to quickly create products that meet these needs and can be produced at lower cost. Achieving these goals is not solely a marketing problem, nor is it solely a design problem or a manufacturing problem; it is a product development problem involving all of these functions.

A product is something sold by an enterprise to its customers. Product development is the set of activities beginning with the perception of a market opportunity and ending in the production, sale, and delivery of a product.