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The Fuzzy Front End
Posted By: cate on 2/19/2007 3:01 PM (CST) 125 Points
do real people actually use this term?
I mean when sitting around and talking about developing new products.
I am asking as I am in the middle of writing a marketing vocabulary guide book for speakers of English as a second language, so if you are kind enough to answer, let me know if you have a favourite marketing term you would like included.

Posted by: proeditor Accepted Answer
2/19/2007 4:02 PM (CST)
Don't know about fuzzy front end, but you could include definitions for "Buzzword," "Catchphrase" and "Jargon" with the advice that good marketers should stay away from using words that fall into those categories. You might look at http://www.buzzwhack.com/ for more ideas.

karen
 
Posted by: KathySmithFilms* Accepted Answer
2/19/2007 4:07 PM (CST)
Hi Cate,

http://www.marketingterms.com/

My fav: Strategy http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&defl=en&q=define:st...

Good luck with your back ends and bottom lines too. :-)
Kath
 
Posted by: W.M.M.A. Member Response
2/19/2007 6:00 PM (CST)
Never heard of a fuzzy front end. (Hi Kath)

Randall
WMMA
 
Posted by: Jeremy Shearer* Member Response
2/19/2007 8:31 PM (CST)
got to say that I am unfamiliar with fuzzy front end, have heard of the fuzzy navel and the fuzzy criter however.

Cheers,

Jeremy
 
Posted by: cate Author Response
2/20/2007 12:01 AM (CST)
Thanks everyone, especially for the weblinks.
What surprises me is that the term comes up a lot if I run it through google or yahoo!.
Any ideas why web 2.0 uses a form of English no one else does?
 
Posted by: stevea Accepted Answer
2/20/2007 3:22 AM (CST)
It’s a term used in product development to define an idea a product or a process which doesn’t have a defined outcome or market or, sometimes, even a scintilla of an application to which it can be put.

It’s also used to define the outset conditions of a programme or a development process where the outcome isn’t yet defined, thus by manipulating the starting point. You end up with a different end result.

It is a corruption of the idea of Fuzzy Logic, where the process is evolved from the data to fit the desired solution.

Real-World scientists (Chemists, physicists, biochemists, biologists etc) always work with “Fuzzy Front Ends” They call them experimental errors. Research scientists start of with a fuzzy front end in an experiment in that if the initial results are unpromising they can change the starting materials, the conditions or the process. They also haven’t much of a clue as to the actual outcome, but they have an idea where they want to go.

As to so many references to “Fuzzy Front End” searches? Google indexes, it doesn’t understand. So if someone puts rubbish in to 68,800 papers out of 69,000 answers that gives you 200 useful references and has you sifting through those whose authors thought that “Fuzzy Front End” would be a nice term.

Out of interest, if you do a Google Scholar Search with the term in “” then you get 725 references, mostly to product design and marketing communications.

Steve Alker
Unimax Rubbish Filtering Incorporated
Unimax Solutions
 
Posted by: skoobie99 Member Response
2/20/2007 6:49 AM (CST)
I'm with Steve,

I typically have encountered the term when talking with Engineering, where it is used to describe the not-so-well-defined frontier or cutting edge of a product or process.

Another way to put it is that people working on the "fuzzy front end" are defining the product or application's next version, or next iteration.

I personally would not use it in a marketing-related communication as I feel it lacks broad enough comprehension and also appeal.

Hope this helps,
John
 
Posted by: cate Author Response
2/20/2007 9:39 AM (CST)
thanks very much for all your help
I have a better idea of which way to go

Cate
 


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