1. Purpose and scope
The concept stage turns an accepted opportunity into a product idea specific enough to judge: who it is for, what it must do, roughly what it costs and sells for, and when it must be ready. It produces two main documents. The market requirements describe the need in market terms, in the language of customers and segments. The business case uses them, together with a concept, a feasibility view and a financial model, to ask for funding to define the product fully.
The stage is deliberately bounded. It is not the place to write detailed product requirements or to start design. Its job is to make the funding decision at Concept approval an informed one, with the key assumptions written down and each one owned, so that later gates can check whether those assumptions still hold.
Concept approval is also the point where the engineering lifecycles record their own concept approval. The SoC, analog and mixed-signal, chiplet and FPGA lifecycles each have a concept approval gate that is the same decision seen from the engineering side, so engineering architecture and specification work can begin in the definition stage that follows.
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