Difference in time influencing creativity performance between design and management majors

This study is aimed to obtain a better understanding of difference in time of day as a factor influencing creativity performance between design and management programs students. Two hundred and ninety-seven college students, consisting of 154 design majors and 143 management majors at a university, participated in this study. Two idea generation tasks adapted from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking verbal tests were used to collect data on their creativity performance across school time intervals. The results show that the distributions of creativity performance across school time intervals reveal statistically significant differences in the fluency and originality measures between the two disciplines. Further, for the design majors, statistically significant differences are found in the fluency, originality, and elaboration measures of creativity; for the management majors, no difference is found for any of the creativity measures. That is, time of school day is a concern in creativity performance for the design students but not a significant factor for their counterparts. It is suggested that the timing issue should be taken into account when we try to assess the instructional and learning performance of creativity-related courses. An open mind and awareness of program differences are expected. More alternatives to improve time-constrains in traditional in-class learning and instruction are also suggested at the end, to create a more individualized and flexible learning environment for creativity.     

Balancing exploration and exploitation capabilities in high technology firms: A multi-source multi-context examination

Based on the dynamic capability view, this study examined the balance between exploration and exploitation capability. With this, we proposed a framework that synthesizes the impact of new product creativity and marketing program creativity on new product quality (internal product quality and external product quality), and further understanding the path to performance of new products in a select number of industrial and consumer products. The main findings revealed that the effect of new product creativity in consumer product firms through internal and external product quality was less dominant than those in industrial product firms. In contrast, the effect of marketing program creativity in industrial product firms through only external product quality was less dominant than those in consumer product firms. Additionally, this paper also discusses the research limitations, future research directions, and theoretical and practical implications.     

创意产业链与创意产业集群

创意产业链强调以创意为龙头,以内容为核心,驱动产品的制造,拉动批发和营销。带动后续产品开发,形成上下联动、左右衔接、一次投入、多次产出的链条．其关键战略环节包括内容、渠道、媒体、需求;创意产业集群指创意产业在地域上的集中,它使创意产品的创造、生产、分销和利用得到最优化,并能够显著提升创意产业的竞争力。     

Organizational antecedents of environmental responsiveness in industrial new product development

The greening of new product development process has been under scrutiny by researchers, but the attention has been limited to consumer products. Based on a survey, this paper investigates the environmental responsiveness in industrial new product development in 82 industrial firms. In comparison to traditional NPD process in the extant literature, the findings revealed additional activities in the greening of industrial NPD. These activities fall under the broader scope of life cycle assessment (LCA) for environmental impact including supplier evaluation and design for environment issues. The paper also investigates the relative impact of organizational antecedents on greening of industrial NPD activities. Organizational antecedents include functional interface of environmental specialists with design and product managers, environmental product policy, and top management support.     

Organisational culture and decision making: a case of consensus management

Abstract
This paper explores how a state-of-the-art concept, organization culture, shapes decision making and consensus generating strategies used in the successful management of product development activities in high technology companies. Engineering development groups interact with many individuals and groups on a wide variety of very comples engineering, manufacturing, marketing and business issues Much uncertainty exists around these issues because information that would allow for a decision to be made is often unknow or unknowable. Trade-offs are made continually resulting in a high degree of interdependence among development groups and others with whom they interact. Achieving a balance between controlling development activities on the on hand, and encouraging creativity and initiative on the other, is a complicated process.
this paper illustrates the role of organizational culture in product development using case material from a very successful US high case material from a very successful US high technology company. 'Consensus management', a major cultural theme at 'DW Enterprises', is a decision making style that involves everyone in the decision making process who might have relevant input. A cultural analysis reveals that the engineers developed specific techniques for generating consensus, and that these related as much to control over participation in product development as to decision making.     

Cross‐Cultural Creativity: Conceptualization and Propositions for Global New Product Development

In today's global business environment, where multinational companies are pressed to increase revenues in order to survive, creativity may hold the key to ensuring their new product development (NPD) efforts lead to innovations with worldwide appeal, such as Apple's iPad and Gillette's Fusion Razor. To leverage creativity for effective global NPD, businesses want to know how cultures differ in their concepts of creativity and the impact of those differences on approaches to developing new products. Because global new products are increasingly developed in, by, and for multiple cultures, a particular need is for a culturally reflective understanding, or conceptualization, of creativity. While creativity is believed to be culturally tied, the dominant framework of creativity used in business and management assumes that creativity is culturally indifferent or insensitive. This knowledge gap is addressed by studying the role of creativity in NPD practices in a cross‐cultural or global context. The study begins by first developing a culturally anchored conceptualization of creativity. Called cross‐cultural creativity, the concept draws on creativity insights from the field of art and aesthetics. The concept specifies two modes of creativity, neither of which is superior to the other, called the spontaneous or S route and the divergent or D route. The S route emphasizes adaptiveness, processes, intuitiveness, and metamorphism, while the D route focuses on disruptiveness, results, rationality, and literalism. Next, this new concept is applied to NPD by positing how creativity in distinct cultures may shape NPD practices, as illustrated by Japanese and U.S. firms. Research propositions are formulated to capture these patterns, and thereafter, theoretical and practical implications of the framework and propositions are discussed. The implications center on global NPD, which is a complex enterprise involving typically more than one culture to design and develop new products for several geographic markets. The study is of interest to researchers needing a globally situated, culturally attached framework of creativity for international NPD studies, and managers seeking to exploit creativity in multinational and multicultural innovation projects.     

利益相关者视角下旧工业建筑的可持续评价

在对旧工业建筑的利益相关者分析的基础上,构建可持续发展评价体系,通过层次分析法与模糊综合评分法进行经济、环境、社会文化与功能四个系统层的可持续发展评价,并对南昌699文化创意产业园进行了实践,提出了旧工业建筑再利用项目的可持续发展路径。研究表明,把利益相关者作为可持续发展评价主体,能有效解决当前可持续发展评价中将利益主体视为无差异群体的问题,为促进旧工业建筑的可持续发展提供了思路和方法。     

Enhancing the Creative Performance of New Product Teams: An Organizational Configurational Approach

Innovation is crucial to managing ever‐increasing environmental complexity. Creativity is the first stage of the innovation process and is particularly relevant in modern new product development (NPD) projects. In response to a call for further empirical research on collective creative performance combining individual and team levels in a comprehensive framework, this paper offers useful evidence for the design of NPD teams to foster creative performance. The results suggest that different sets of individual traits and collective processes combine and interact, enabling a similar level of creative performance from different configurations of individual and team “ingredients.” There are no consistently good‐quality or poor‐quality NPD teams or processes. However, equifinal configurations—based on team composition, and interpersonal, coordination, control, and diversity management processes—can be effective in producing creative products. Through a large‐scale study of 119 teams of students involved in an NPD activity, this paper contributes by expanding creativity and NPD team design literature, providing the basis for a “first right” approach to real‐world, in‐company research. It first proposes and tests the adoption of the configurational equifinality approach in the NPD team design domain, introducing the concept of complementarities among different types of “team ingredients,” both at the individual and team level. Second, it introduces different multidimensional measures of team creative performance, relevant to generalizing and comparing the research results. Third, it offers several guidelines for designing real‐world NPD teams through the combination of diversity and interpersonal management, as well as coordination and control processes, which have not been studied to any great extent but are at times controversial in creativity literature.     

User-oriented design for the optimal combination on product design

This paper presents a new approach of user-oriented design for transforming users’ perception into product elements design. An experimental study on mobile phones is conducted to examine how product form and product color affect product image individually and as a whole. The concept of Kansei Engineering is used to extract the experimental samples as a data base for Quantitative Theory Type I and neural networks (NNs). The result of numerical analysis suggests that mobile phone makers need to provide various product colors to attract users, in addition to product forms. This paper demonstrates the advantage of using NNs for determining the optimal combination of product form and product color, particularly if the product into design elements. Based on the analysis of NNs, we can use 72 representative product colors of each mobile phone to develop a product color data base consisting of 16777216 (=256×256×256, True-Color model) colors with the associated product image. The design data base provides useful insights to save any amount of money and time for the new product development. The product designers can input a product image to work out an adequate color on a mobile phone. Furthermore, the design data base can be used, in conjunction with computer-aided design system or virtual reality technology, to build a 3D model for facilitating the design process of mobile phones. Although, the mobile phones are chosen as the object of the experimental study, this approach can be applied to other products with various design elements.     

Nurturing All-round Engineering and Product Designers

This paper discusses how a curriculum should be revised to nurture all-round engineering and product designers to meet new social and industrial needs. It first reviews the limitations of the current engineering and product design education, and argues that it is biased either towards the acquisition of engineering and technological knowledge and skills but not critical thinking skills; or towards the nurturing of so-called creative thinking, while ignoring the conducting of in-depth investigations. This paper uses Hong Kong as a case study to further identify new social and industrial needs. To meet these needs, it proposes the consideration of `Eight Cs' for the engineering and product design curriculum, that is: Competent, Comprehensive, Compulsory, Critical, Creative, Curious, Collaborative, and Continuous. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Team control mode,workers' creativity,and new product innovativeness

Scholars of creativity and innovation argue that successful innovations originate from the creative ideas of workers. However, few studies have empirically examined how management mechanisms, such as the control mode adopted by the new product development team, may work together with workers' creativity to deliver a successful new product. Drawing on the theory of opposing action strategies of team innovation, we propose that different team control modes may work together with team members' creativity to jointly influence the innovativeness of teamwork outcomes. With survey data collected from different sources in new product development teams, we find that restrictive control can effectively help teams composed of very creative members to successfully develop innovative new products. Conversely, promotive control can effectively help teams composed of less creative members to deliver innovative new products.     

Customer and Competitor Insights,New Product Development Competence,and New Product Creativity: Differential,Integrative, and Substitution Effects

Developing creative new products requires a synthesis among customer‐oriented and competitor‐oriented learning, and new product development competence. However, underlying this synthesis is a paradox: how to integrate both customer and competitor insights within a technology‐centric new product development process. In order to examine the nature of this organizational tension, this study develops a conceptual framework and tests a series of six hypotheses with data generated from our study of creative new products within 187 high‐technology ventures in China. Differential effects are found in the way in which customer‐oriented learning (neutral) and competitor‐oriented learning (positive) relate to new product creativity. Their integration, meanwhile, is positively related to this new product outcome. Results also reveal that new product development competence, both independently and when integrated with customer‐oriented learning, positively impacts new product creativity. However, the study also reveals a surprising finding of a substitution effect where the combination of competitor‐oriented learning with new product development competence is inversely related to new product creativity. These findings are discussed, and their implications are derived for further research and both market and technology management.     

The Roles of Marketing and Industrial Design in Discontinuous New Product Development*

Radical or “discontinuous” products based on new technological breakthroughs are playing an ever‐increasing role in the success of firms. However, little research has been conducted that investigates the roles of marketing and industrial design (ID) in the development of these types of products. Further, past research has tended to overlook the role that industrial design, and the impact of the marketing‐industrial design interaction, can have on the development of discontinuous new products. Frequently, the term design is used broadly or is equated with engineering; thus, while the marketing–research and development (R&D) interaction is studied, the marketing–ID as well as the industrial design–R&D relationships are not considered. This article examines the roles of marketing and industrial design in the product development process for discontinuous innovations. Specifically, questions concerning how and the degree to which marketing and industrial design are integrated into the development process are investigated. The investigation employs multiple methods, or triangulation, in order to secure an in‐depth understanding of the roles of these disciplines. In the course of examining these questions, key factors influencing industrial design and marketing involvement are identified and preliminary models are examined. The research, which was conducted in two phases, employed a mixed‐method, multiple sample design. The methods used included a survey, field observation study, and depth‐interviewing. Data were collected from three different samples: R&D managers, project team members (including personnel from various disciplines—marketing, R&D, industrial design, engineering, etc.), and industrial design managers. The use of the different data sources and sampling of various groups of managers was employed in order to provide a rich context for investigating the research questions of interest. In addition, a preliminary analysis of factors (e.g., degree of product discontinuity, product innovation objectives, process discontinuity, process formality) identified in the first phase was conducted, and these relationships were explored further in the second phase of the research. Findings across the two phases of this research suggest that the development of discontinuous new products involves a process that is different from more conventional new product development—particularly as it concerns the roles of marketing and industrial design. The high degree of discontinuity inherent in such projects, along with the strong R&D orientation often surrounding them, results in delayed involvement of marketing and ID, as well as altering their roles in the new product development (NPD) process. Factors such as the degree of product discontinuity (DPD), process discontinuity (PCD), and process formality (PF) seemed to exert a differential influence on the involvement of marketing and ID. Although their roles and involvement are altered in discontinuous new product development, this research suggests that marketing and ID roles in this context involve increased challenges with respect to validation of key assumptions and product application directions. Additionally, managers operating in this development context need to explicitly consider the influence of factors such as discontinuity level in undertaking NPD projects with respect to how it affects the execution of industrial design and marketing activities.     

Antecedents and Consequences of Creativity in Product Innovation Teams

The generation of creative ideas and their manifestation as new products (NPs) are fundamental innovation activities of product innovation teams. Despite the importance of generating creative ideas at the fuzzy front end of the product innovation process, our understanding of antecedents and consequences of creativity of product innovation teams is limited. Drawing on Shane and Ulrich's organization design perspective of innovation, this study aims at examining the intermediary role of creativity as a critical link between team dynamics and product competitive advantage. In this study, the authors focus on NP and marketing program (MP) creativity in product innovation teams. They develop and empirically test a model that examines how internal and external team dynamics influence NP and MP creativity, and how NP and MP creativity affect product competitive advantage as a strategic innovation outcome. The study uses 206 matched responses from senior managers and product team leaders in high‐tech manufacturing firms in the United States to avoid common‐method bias. The authors use maximum likelihood estimation in a structural equation model to empirically test the proposed model. They find that two separate dimensions of creativity—novelty and meaningfulness—are differentially affected by team dynamics. For example, NP novelty as a result of divergent process is predominantly influenced by external team factors such as market‐based reward system and planning process formalization. On the other hand, NP meaningfulness as a result of convergent process is dominantly influenced by internal team factors such as social cohesion and superordinate identity. In addition, MP novelty is determined by social cohesion, superordinate identity, planning process formalization, and encouragement to take risks, while MP meaningfulness is influenced by social cohesion and planning process formalization. Our findings also suggest that NP novelty and meaningfulness, but not MP novelty and meaningfulness, play important intermediary roles in determining product competitive advantage. This study contributes to narrowing the important gap in the literature by examining the effect of team dynamics on creativity and by linking creativity to strategic innovation outcomes. Our study suggests that a firm's ability to manage team dynamics toward generating creative NPs and MPs constitutes a dynamic capability that can provide a competitive advantage over the competition.     

提高井控装备质量保障安全钻井作业

简述井控装的发展状况，肯定装备国产化所出的成绩，同时针对现场使用，监督抽查中出现的问题，提出了应从产品标准宣贯及制修订，提高设计水平，正确认识和认真对待生产许可证换发证制度、ＩＳＯ９０００及ＡＰＩ认证，开展驻厂监造及正确理解和应用监督抽查结果，加强后处理等方面着手，提高井轩质量，保障安全钻井作业。     

Applying Industrial Design and Cost Engineering to New Product Development in Early‐Stage Firms

For early‐stage firms, successful commercialization of each new product is critically important, given the shortage of financial resources, the limited product portfolio, and small staffs typical of such firms. This paper investigates two key contributing factors for new product success in entrepreneurial firms: designing products that are appealing to target users in both form and function and designing products that can be manufactured at an attractive margin so that the new enterprise can generate much needed positive cash flow. These two practices—industrial design and cost engineering—are well studied in the context of larger, established corporations but have not been explored in the context of new ventures. This study focuses on the intensity of individual and combined adoption of design and cost engineering as measured by product development efficiency and effectiveness. The study was conducted on a homogeneous sample of early‐stage firms that develop physical, assembled products where design plays a role. The data collection focused only on the first product developed by each firm respectively. The results show that when implemented together, industrial design and cost engineering enhance both the effectiveness and efficiency of new product development in early‐stage firms, to greater effect than each does individually. Intensive individual adoption of practices had a negative impact on development efficiency measures such as development cost and duration. Only cost engineering individually had a beneficial impact on development effectiveness as measured by product margins. When combined, these two practices had a beneficial impact on both development duration and cost for the company's first commercial product, thereby reducing time‐to‐market and precious cash expenditures while maximizing project breakeven timing. The most successful firms in the study achieved a balance between creative innovation and cost discipline in the NPD process with third‐party design and manufacturing resources. It was found that integrating third‐party design firms into the development process can challenge, simplify, and add additional creative resources to the core entrepreneurial team, maximizing the ability to catalyze beneficial tension between creativity and cost discipline.     

Student response to an Internet-mediated industrial design studio course

The purpose of this study is to investigate student attitudes towards and perceptions of using the Internet and information technology to mediate a design studio course and to propose guidelines and suggestions for developing Internet-mediated design studio courses. Two classes of third-year undergraduate industrial design students in two collaborating universities in Taiwan—Chang Gung University and National Yunlin University of Science and Technology—participated in an experimental design studio course mediated with an online design learning environment. Surveys and focus group interviews were conducted at the end of the course to record students’ attitudes and perceptions. The students thought that the approach used had a positive influence on design teaching and learning and expressed acceptance of using the Internet to support design education. Finally, suggestions were proposed to help design educators in adopting, modifying, and developing systems for using the Internet to mediate design studio courses.     

Creative Thinking Ability, Cognitive Type and R&D Performance

The purpose of this study was to investigate the contributions of creative thinking ability and cognitive type to research and development (R&D) performance. One hundred and six researchers in an R&D institute of a petroleum company in Taiwan were given the Circle Test of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator . Their R&D performance was measured in terms of assigned technical reports, completed service projects, published papers, and a supervisor's performance rating. Results showed that there was a low but positive correlation between creativity and the first-authored paper and the technical report. The cognitive type was on the other hand associated with the performance rating and the first-authored service project assignment. Implications for R&D management are discussed.     

How integrating industrial design in the product development process impacts on company performance

There is a growing belief that investing in industrial design is beneficial to company performance. This article sheds more light on how and when integrating industrial design in the product development process can enhance a company's competitive position. The basic premise is that the impact of industrial design on company performance is not unconditional, but dependent on industry evolution and design strategy. We opted to define industrial design in a general way, namely as the activity that transforms a set of product requirements into a configuration of materials, elements and components. This activity can have an impact on a product's appearance, user friendliness, ease of manufacture, efficient use of materials, functional performance, and so on. The empirical data incorporated in this study stems from two Dutch manufacturing industries, namely home furniture and precision instruments. Home furniture and precision instruments were selected because the strategy of integrating industrial design in the product development process is rather mature in the first‐named industry and emerging in the second. We collected data from firms investing considerably in industrial design (n = 23) and firms investing little to nothing in industrial design (n = 24), using a semistructured questionnaire that was administrated during face‐to‐face sessions with senior managers. Two out of the three research hypotheses were supported. It was found that the extent to which firms integrate industrial design in new product development projects has a significant and positive influence on company performance (Hla), in particular when the strategy of investing in industrial design is relatively new for the industry involved (Hlb). There was no systematic pattern indicating that design innovation is more important in industries where the use of design is mature than in industries where the use of design is emerging (H2). Instead, we found that design innovation has significant positive performance effects in both types of industries. One important managerial inference from our study is that new product development managers should consider the changing nature of competition during industry evolution while developing strategies that encompass the use of industrial design in new product development. Another important managerial inference is that, besides being innovative in the field of products, being innovative with respect to design and design strategy can help to enhance competitiveness regardless of industry evolution.     

Impact of Knowledge Type and Strategic Orientation on New Product Creativity and Advantage in High‐Technology Firms

As different types of knowledge may have different effects on new product positional advantage, knowledge portfolio management in concert with the firm's strategic orientation is indispensable for new product success. However, previous research has not dealt with the knowledge resources and strategic implementations that affect new product development (NPD). To fill in this gap, the current study focuses on two dimensions of knowledge type (knowledge complexity and knowledge tacitness) and two forms of strategic orientation (technological orientation and market orientation), which influence the positional advantages as determinants of NPD outcomes. Drawing on the resource‐based view, this study explains how these knowledge and strategic orientation variables influence new product creativity, which comprised the novel and meaningful characteristics of new products. Finally, it demonstrates how these two dimensions of new product creativity differentially provide product advantages in terms of customer satisfaction and product differentiation, which lead to superior new product performance. A conceptual framework is developed and the related hypotheses provided to incorporate the study variables and to test their relationships in a sample based on data collected from both marketing and project managers from 100 U.S. high‐technology firms. The model estimation results from path analysis demonstrate that reliance on knowledge of high tacitness harms meaningfulness, while reliance on knowledge of high complexity increases both novelty and meaningfulness of new product. As expected, market orientation and technological orientation improve the meaningfulness and novelty dimensions of the new product, respectively. New product novelty and meaningfulness are shown to enhance new product advantage in terms of product differentiation and customer satisfaction, both of which contribute to new product performance. It is also found that the combinative use of market orientation and knowledge complexity, and technological orientation and knowledge tacitness positively influence both the novelty and meaningfulness of new products. This study, using the product‐level analysis, contributes to the literature by clarifying how the firm's different knowledge properties and strategic orientations both play a role as a source of new product creativity, and how new product creativity, as a valuable and rare resource, enhances new product advantage. The study results suggest that project/product managers should increase the transferability and codifiability of unstructured knowledge by stimulating intraorganizational knowledge sharing among NPD team members, and that they should promote both technology and market‐orientated practices to fully develop creativity of new products.