New Product Adoption in Home Building

eList

15 March 2010

New Product Adoption in Home Building

Manufacturers are often slow to adopt new technology in the residential housing industry, which limits their ability to achieve the productivity advances experienced in other industries. To help manufacturers understand this problem, and to facilitate the use of new technologies in the homebuilding sector, PD&R recently released New Product Adoption in Housing: Guide for Manufacturers.

From lessons learned through interviews, focus groups, and case studies, this guide takes an inside look at today’s home building industry and provides tips for manufacturers looking to commercialize an innovation. The authors make five recommendations to residential housing manufacturers who wish to employ a new idea or technology successfully:

Know the housing market and where a product fits;
Understand how building codes, productivity, and functionality affect an innovation;
Recognize how meeting or failing to adhere to applicable codes can affect acceptance of a new technology;
Choose how to introduce a technology to the market carefully and involve all key players; and
Identify possible product recipients and use specialized marketing to engage them.