Beschreibung:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Systems engineering, as a field of practice, has been confronting the issue of extension into the commercial sector. Systems engineering is routinely used in some sectors, notably defense, aerospace and other government acquisition domains. Commercial industry, particularly in consumer products, which values rapid development of products and the minimization of any activity which is perceived as “overhead”, has not expressed much interest in systems engineering as a product development methodology. “Innovation” is a concept commonly associated with the interests of commercial industry. The focus in innovation is to develop new product systems of new kinds in order to generate and exploit market opportunities. Innovation is an activity which has been studied in its own right. One particular model of innovation is the W‐model which has similar form to the V‐model of systems engineering. This paper explores the similarities of the W‐model of innovation and V‐model of systems engineering to expose the synergy of systems engineering and the core interest of commercial industry in innovation.</jats:p>