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A visit to Craig Vogel's cluttered office at Carnegie Mellon University is a journey to the intersection of creative destruction and American consumerism. His shelves are a graveyard; a loving anthology; and a shrine to the good, the great, and the truly idiotic. Here's that indestructible metal toaster you used when you were a kid. A few black rotary telephones -- the kind that Ma Bell used to make. There are radios, coffeemakers, blenders. And there are potato peelers -- lots of potato peelers. More on those later.

Vogel is a professor of design. With Jonathan Cagan, a mechanical-engineering professor at the university, he teaches a course in product development. The two academics research and consult on the subject of new product design for such companies as Ford Motor, Motorola, and Whirlpool. This is what they've learned so far: Companies don't do a very good job of developing new products.

The issue: Engineers are from Mars, designers are from Venus. Engineers tend to obsess over the details of getting products to work -- but they're uncomfortable with the critical questions that have to be answered before a new product ever gets to manufacturing. Who will buy it? What value will it add? Designers revel in those sloppier issues, but they tend to cower when confronted with problems related to craftsmanship, durability, and reliability. That results in product after product that fails on one dimension or the other -- or worse yet, both.

In their book, Creating Breakthrough Products: Innovation from Product Planning to Program Approval (Prentice Hall, 2002), Vogel and Cagan advocate an integrated approach to product design. Innovative new products, the authors argue, come from mastering the "fuzzy front end." They happen when a company delivers on both style and technology in a way that can provide some measure of fantasy.

Surrounded by Coke cans from eras past, toasters, and the occasional potato peeler, Vogel and Cagan spoke with Fast Company about inventing and delivering successful new products.

Managing the Fuzzy Front End

Design problem: Merge style with technology. The 1935 Sears Coldspot, developed with designer Raymond Loewy, was a bold leap forward for the lowly refrigerator. Loewy gave the clunky cold box a clean new look, wrapping the cooling unit with sheet metal. He made it easy for owners to open the door, even when their arms were filled with groceries. And he replaced the metal shelves inside with aluminum to prevent rusting. This was an early example of the integration of style and technology -- and sales soared.

Cagan: The "fuzzy front end" is a term we heard used a lot in the industry. It's a very early stage of product development, when you're really not sure what you're designing yet. You're trying to figure out what your opportunity is -- and to assess the whole context for that opportunity.

Vogel: Many people, especially engineers, are uncomfortable with the fuzzy front end. They see getting through it as something you do on the way to a place where you can measure things more effectively. But our message is, You absolutely have to treat that part of the process well. The Coldspot was a very early example of what happens when a company spends enough time on the front end -- and the result was effective. Sears and Loewy answered the question, How do you bring this monster machine from the back porch into the kitchen? They saw the opportunity.

Cagan: A lot of companies just worry about getting the product out. They figure, Let's not worry about this early stuff. We'll focus on manufacturing, and we'll get it to work at the end. So they either create beautifully made products that no one wants, or they miss all of their deadlines because they're trying to catch up at the end. We found that by investing time in the fuzzy front end, you can accelerate the development process.