Radical innovation of product design using an effect solving method

Innovation activities are required for industry to develop competitive products in response to rapid changes of the market. Radical innovation (RI) enables products long-term technical advantages and market competitiveness. However, the existing RI research focuses on areas of the business and management. There is a lack of an effective method of RI for product development. This paper proposes a systematic effect solving method (ESM) for radical innovation of product design. The ESM includes the problem identification, function analysis, key problem determination, effect selection, structure mapping and scheme evaluation. The proposed method can not only improve the possibility of developing RI products, but also save time in design. The method is applied to develop a new type of wind turbines with a granted patent. Feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method is proved.