Boating against the current and the market game strategies in new product development: Economic advance-retreat course analysis

Boating against the current is one image which generalizes many development processes in socioeconomic fields. Its basic characteristic is that the human can design and implement his advancing strategies initiatively, and the comprehensive environment synthetized by various objective factors has to accept the human choice passively. But the environment can influence the human behaviors in a manner of pressure or resistance. This game between the human and the economic environment is different from the traditional game problems. The conceptual model of boating against the current is described in this paper. The basic concepts and characteristics of course (advance-retreat course, or rise-fall course) are summarized. Then the basic framework of course analysis is built preliminarily, and the application model of discrete course and the corresponding solving method are brought forward. Finally, two application examples of discrete course are studied. The analysis shows that the development of new products in the traditional industries and the newly arisen industries should adopt two completely different development strategies, and they are the “overall development, propulsion in the linear way” and the “gradual development, propulsion in the point way” respectively.