The MINI Countryman: Successful Management of the Early Stage in a Cooperative Product Development Environment

Abstract

In order to stimulate further growth, BMW considered a radical innovation for MINI that was associated with a high degree of uncertainty, many chances and risks, and a large amount of organizational turmoil. The company decided to pursue a unique strategy in the automotive industry by combining a small car segment with a dedicated premium approach for the first time. The development of the MINI Countryman was extremely difficult since several challenges of the early phase of product development had to be overcome. The early stage of BMW’s vehicle development process is subdivided into a strategy-/initial phase and the concept development phase. In the early phase of the MINI Countryman, not only analytical criteria, but also subjective feelings, expert assessments and strategic visions were considered. In 2006, the BMW board authorized the start of the concept phase and allocated the required resources to the project. During the concept phase, four major challenges had to be overcome that had significantly increased complexity in comparison to regular vehicle projects: management of the cooperation, goal incongruity, organizational development, and concurrent engineering. Today, MINI is one of the fastest growing brands in the industry, and the Countryman has been copied intensively since its market introduction.