Engineering innovation methodology using evolutionary game theory

In the production industry, the development speed of new product has increased after the introduction of CAE tools and the modularization of product structure. In this situation, it is more difficult to keep corporate businesses profitable through developing new products based on the "competitive differences in product" concept. Most of commercially available innovative products are created by combining current technologies. There are, however, a few discussions about the methodology of technology combinations. In this paper, the authors present a product innovation model of the technology combination that successfully implicates the Evolutionary Game Theory to describe the technology and product innovation process. As illustrative example, Apple iPod was selected to explain the methodology.