We define the Front End of Innovation as:
"Activities that come before the "formal and well structured" New Product Development (NPD) Portion."

We do not use the term "Fuzzy Front End" since it implies that the FEI is mysterious, uncontrollable and cannot be managed.

"Many of the practices that aid the NPD portion do not apply to the FFE. They fall short, as shown in Table 1, because the nature of work, commercialiation date, funding level, revenue expectations, activities and measures of progress are fundamentally different" (Koen et al, 2002).