Managing complexity in new product development: a framework for assessing and mitigating over featuring

Over-featuring (OVF)—the inclusion of attributes exceeding consumer needs or development capacity—remains a recurrent cause of failure in new product development (NPD). This research employs a multi-study experimental design to examine OVF from both consumer and firm perspectives. The consumer studies compare expectations of capability and usability before product use with actual experiences after interaction, identifying an inverted-U pattern in overall value as additional features lead to feature fatigue. The firm study investigates how professionals configure products under uncertainty and cognitive biases, revealing systematic tendencies to exceed consumer-optimal configurations. By analyzing misalignments between consumer value perceptions and firm assumptions, the project offers a behavioral explanation of OVF. The contribution lies in clarifying how strategic rationalizations and unintentional biases jointly drive over-featured outcomes, providing a foundation for decision-support tools that promote alignment between product design and consumer utility.