The effect of new product development techniques on new product success in Spanish firms

The rate of market and technological changes has accelerated in the last years. This turbulent environment requires new methods and techniques to bring successful new products to the marketplace. Much attention has focused on new development techniques, but little empirical research has been conducted to validate these techniques. In this study, the relationship between popular new development techniques and new product success is examined. Our findings suggest that only a subset of these popular techniques is significantly related with new product success in Spanish firms. The study also identifies the main contributors to new product development (NPD) effectiveness in Spanish firms.     

Sources, uses, and forms of data in the new product development process

This paper presents qualitative and exploratory research investigating the role that managing knowledge and information plays in new product development (NPD). A set of 20 in-depth interviews uncovered eight basic types of information used throughout the NPD process and three general approaches to managing information needed in the NPD process. Although some exemplary companies seem to do an outstanding job of collecting and disseminating information, the majority of firms struggle. NPD process automation solutions tackle part of the problem, ignoring nonquantitative data forms and the full picture of information use throughout the entire development process.     

The R&D and marketing cooperation across new product development stages: An empirical study of Taiwan's IT industry

This study extends the new product development (NPD) process research to a new environmental context (Taiwan's IT industry) and a new business type (original design manufacturing, ODM). Taiwan's IT industry has achieved a very outstanding performance during the last two decades. The island's experience is quite valuable for those emerging countries that are struggling to transform themselves from producing low-value goods to making high-technology products. After analyzing the data collected from 153 research and development (R&D) and marketing managers in Taiwanese IT firms, this study finds that the higher the perceived importance of R&D-marketing cooperation is, the higher the attained level of R&D-marketing cooperation will be. Consequently, a better NPD performance can be achieved. This study additionally reports that a firm that has adopted a Defender innovation strategy attains a lower level of R&D-marketing cooperation, and has a poorer NPD performance than those firms that adopted either Prospector or Analyzer innovation strategies. Finally, environmental uncertainty has no significant impacts on the perceived importance and the attained level of R&D-marketing cooperation.     

The influence of formal controls on customer interactivity in new product development

This study examines how formal control mechanisms, specifically output, process, and team reward controls used in new product development (NPD) projects, influence the degree of customer interaction during the project. It is argued that controls can differentially focus the efforts of the project team either internally on the organization's process or externally on the market and its customers. Data from 95 projects across several industries suggest that the use of output control and team rewards leads to higher customer interactivity. However, heavy reliance on process control can lead to reduced customer interactivity if not also accompanied with output controls. This study extends our understanding of using management controls to integrate the voice of the customer into new product development.     

Supplier integration in new product development: Computer mediated communication,knowledge exchange and buyer performance

In new product development (NPD), the buyer–supplier relationship is changing. Suppliers are becoming an integral part of the design team. This study investigates the effectiveness of computer-mediated and face-to-face communication channels on knowledge exchange between buyer and supplier firms, and ultimately buyer NPD and market performance. Open innovation literature and media richness theory are used to develop hypotheses which are then empirically tested using data collected from 157 R&D project managers from U.S. manufacturing firms. To date, empirical studies on the link between supplier integration and buyer performance show conflicting results. Structural equation modeling found a significant positive link between knowledge exchange and NPD performance, measured both in terms of effectiveness and efficiency, and a significant positive link between effective and efficient NPD and market performance. A surprising finding is that contrary to media richness theory, email can perform like face-to-face communication transmitting rich information and having a positive relationship to knowledge exchange between buyer and supplier. It was also found that with face-to-face communication, knowledge exchange fully mediates the relationship with effective NPD while with email communication knowledge exchange fully mediates the relationship with efficient NPD. Video conferencing was found to have no significant effect on knowledge exchange and the effect of web-based tools was significant and negative. The implications of these findings in theory and practice are discussed.     

Compressing new product success-to-success cycle time: Deep customer value understanding and idea generation

Despite nearly 30 years of research focused on improving new product development (NPD) processes, recent research reveals that these improvements have failed to materialize as expected. Additionally, in today's continuous-change business environment, managers are focused on reducing cycle time in nearly all operations, including NPD, in order to realize acceptable returns on investments more quickly. Thus, we must not only be better but also faster at NPD, specifically at compressing the cycle time between new product successes, i.e., accelerating success-to-success velocity and not just accelerating each NPD project. But, how can businesses both improve the probability of new product successes and also speed up the process of doing so? This paper proposes that formalizing front-end processes will certainly help. Specifically, a process is presented which draws on customer value research that ought to help clarify the traditional “fuzzy front end” of NPD processes, resulting in consistently more successful new products.     

Identifying and prioritizing critical success factors for conflict management in collaborative new product development

Conflict management is crucial to the success of client-supplier collaborative new product development (NPD). This paper examines the critical success factors of conflict management in collaborative NPD. Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), the importance of 4 categories of success factors, namely relationship management, conflict handling system, new product development process management and communication, totally 13 factors, are prioritized. The results show that communication management, trust and commitment to the collaboration are the most important factors. Based on the factors identified, a hierarchy model of conflict management is proposed, with which clients and suppliers can formulate action plans for better conflict management.     

Best new product development and management practices in the Korean high-tech industry

This paper investigates critical factors affecting the likelihood of new product success and effective new product development (NPD) models for Korean high-tech firms. Empirical results suggest that successful projects differ from unsuccessful projects in project environment, skills and resources, project leadership, strategic fit, efficient NPD process, and effective product-positioning strategies.This study confirmed that efficient and effective new product development and management were important determinants of high-tech firms' competitive advantage. Furthermore, the findings of this study raised questions about some commonly held beliefs when compared with Western studies focusing on high-tech industries.     

The impact of structural and contextual factors on trust formation in product development teams

This study examines antecedents of trust formation in new product development (NPD) teams and the effects of trust on NPD team performance. A theoretical framework relating structural and contextual factors to interpersonal trust and project outcomes was built, including task complexity as a moderating variable. Hypotheses from this model were tested with data on 93 product development projects carried out in Turkey. The findings showed that structural factors such as moderate level of demographic diversity, proximity of team members, team longevity, and contextual factors (procedural and interactional justices) were positively related to the development of interpersonal trust in NPD teams. The findings also revealed that interpersonal trust had an impact on team learning and new product success, but not on speed-to-market. Further, the findings showed that the impact of interpersonal trust on team learning and new product success was higher when there was higher task complexity. Theoretical and managerial implications of the study findings are discussed.     

Organizing for new product development speed and the implications for organizational stress

This study examines the effects of bureaucratic structure and organizational control on new product development (NPD) speed. It also examines the effects of NPD speed on organizational stress. The empirical findings from 130 US manufacturing companies can be summarized as follows. Formalized structures and centralized structures have a negative impact on invention speed. Formal controls have a positive impact on innovation speed. Informal controls have a positive impact on both invention speed and innovation speed. Invention speed has a positive impact on organizational stress and innovation speed has a negative impact on organizational stress.     

Navigating the new product development process

The quest for success in new product development (NPD) requires management to navigate complex processes. This study presents empirical evidence of the evaluative criteria used by well-experienced NPD managers from the UK and the Netherlands to control performance at different gates of the NPD process. The emerging usage patterns suggest that these criteria are aligned to the specific requirements of each stage in the process. This allows for detection of problems and initiation of adjustments that increase the chance for overall success of the new product. Based on these findings, recommendations are provided for managers to safeguard strategically the performance of their NPD efforts.     

Antecedents and consequences of the strategic orientations in new product development: The case of Chinese manufacturers

The objective of the present study is to advance the understanding of the role of the strategic orientation of the firm for successful new product development (NPD), in the context of Chinese manufacturing firms. Through field research accompanied by a review of the related literature, this study identifies customer orientation and technology orientation as crucial strategic components that are important to successful new product development. This research proposes a conceptual model of strategic orientations, in which firm-internal (organizational support) and -external (environmental turbulence) factors are expected to influence strategic orientations, which, in turn, impact NPD performance. The model is tested using data collected from a large-scale survey of 232 manufacturing firms in China. The results largely support the hypotheses derived from the conceptual model. First, organizational support and environmental turbulence have a positive influence on the implementation of strategic orientations. Second, the two strategic orientations show a different pattern of performance implications.     

Information technology tool use frequency in new product development: The effect of stage-specific use frequency on performance

Drawing from the Resource-based View of the firm and based on prior literature, we examine two organizational factors that top management can control (‘executive champion for IT’ and ‘formalized ROI for IT’) for enhancing information technology (IT) tool use during new product development (NPD). Further, we investigate the subsequent effects of IT tool use on NPD task proficiency and performance. Moreover, research on IT use in NPD has matured enough to suggest that the effect of IT tool use on outcomes should be examined with a decompositional approach in order to flesh out the nuances on consequences. Hence, adopting a phase-based approach, we examine the differences in the effects at three separate NPD stages: discovery, development, and commercialization. The model is empirically tested with data collected from large-sized Japanese firms. The results of structural equation modeling show that executive champion for IT positively influences tool usage in all three stages, and formalized ROI for IT has positive effect on enhancing NPD task proficiency in discovery and development. Further, IT tool use frequency enhances NPD task proficiency with varying effect sizes in all three stages, highest in discovery and lowest in commercialization. Finally, concurring with prior literature, task proficiency is found to affect NPD performance positively. Based on these findings, we discuss theoretical and managerial implications as well as provide specific suggestions for future research.     

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.     

Antecedents and Consequences of Information Technology Usage in NPD: A Comparison of Dutch and U.S. Companies*

This study examines information technology (IT) usage for new product development (NPD) in a global context. Specifically, this research seeks to ascertain the factors that influence IT usage and the relationship between IT usage and new product performance in two different countries—the United States and the Netherlands. The interest here is in discovering if, and how, these relationships may be different depending on the country within which the NPD effort is undertaken. Employing a mail survey methodology, the present study uses data from a sample of U.S. practitioner members from the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA) and new product managers from Dutch manufacturing companies to examine the effect of IT infrastructure, IT embeddedness, NPD process formalization, colocation, outsourcing of NPD projects, and length of time on the job on the extent of IT usage. The data are also used to explore the impact of IT usage on speed to market and market performance. The results indicate that IT embeddedness and NPD process formalization positively influence IT usage in both the United States and the Netherlands. Colocation and length of time on the job are negatively associated with IT usage only in Dutch firms. Similarly, outsourcing of NPD projects is positively related to IT usage only in U.S. firms. Finally, IT usage has a positive relationship with speed to market in the Netherlands and with market performance in the United States. An important implication of the present study is that IT usage does impact speed to market and market performance, confirming anecdotal evidence. However, these relationships are not the same in each country. Moreover, the antecedents to IT usage also vary by country. Thus, the precursors and consequences of IT usage in NPD are context specific. Another implication of this research is that unless IT is embedded into the NPD process, it is unlikely that the benefits of IT will come to fruition. Finally, this study suggests that as firms use more globally dispersed teams for NPD and outsource more of their development activities, IT usage is likely to increase to facilitate communication and cooperation.     

Organisational, technical and marketing antecedents for successful new product development

Previous research in new product development has examined the role of organisational structure and marketing and technical skills and activities in encouraging successful innovation. This study examines the role played by organisational structure in supporting the marketing and technical/production activities in new product development, and direct and indirect effects of all of these antecedents on new product success. The goal of the study is to observe which factors lead to product success and to determine how they interconnect. Implications for new product management are provided in the concluding section.     

Do Social Media Tools Impact the Development Phase? An Exploratory Study

Over the past two decades, firms have increasingly adopted information technology (IT) tools and services to improve the new product development (NPD) process. Recently, social media tools and/or tools that include social networking features are being utilized to allow users both inside and outside the organization to easily communicate and collaboratively design, manage, and launch new products and services. Unfortunately, there is little empirical evidence to suggest what influence these new IT tools have on NPD performance. Through a project‐level, exploratory, empirical study, the impact of these new IT tools on the development phase of the NPD process is investigated. We find that the use of these new tools is significantly lower than the adoption of traditional IT tools such as e‐mail and computer‐aided‐design. Traditional tools have a significant, positive impact on NPD outcomes, including team collaboration, the concepts/prototypes generated, and management evaluation. Interestingly, new media tools such as project wikis and shared collaboration spaces also have a significant, positive impact on concepts/prototypes generated, and management evaluation. Surprisingly, social networking tools like weblogs and Twitter negatively impact management evaluation while having no impact on NPD team collaboration and concepts/prototypes generated. These results suggest that social networking tools in their current guise are not helpful to the NPD team and may in fact be distracting to innovation management during the development phase.     

Customer interactivity and new product performance: Moderating effects of product newness and product embeddedness

Understanding customer needs which drive significant product innovation is particularly challenging for new product development (NPD) organizations. Research has addressed how organizations benefit from interacting with customers, but more conceptualization is needed into the dimensions of the customer interaction process. In a business-to-business (B2B) setting, customer interactivity is conceptualized as a multi-dimensional construct consisting of bidirectional communications, participation, and joint problem solving during NPD projects. Drawing upon organizational information processing theory, customer interactivity is hypothesized to be positively related to customer information quality when developing highly innovative products, but not when developing modifications or extensions of existing products. Another condition affecting this relationship studied is the embeddedness of the new product in the customer's business environment. Customer interactivity is hypothesized to be positively related to information quality for highly embedded product, but not for low embedded product. Results from a sample of NPD organizations in several B2B industries support these hypotheses. The study contributes to the marketing literature and practice by identifying important dimensions of the customer interaction process which lead to more proactive organizations, and identifying two moderating conditions of the customer interactivity and NPD performance relationship.     

An assessment of post-M&;A integration influences on new product development performance: An empirical analysis from China,Taiwan, and HK

This study examines the possible benefits and effects of post-M&A integration on new product development (NPD) performance in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. The total sample size was 251 respondents. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used for statistical analysis. The results demonstrate that external integration correlates positively with internal integration. Although external integration relates positively to new product competitive advantage (NPCA), internal integration does not have a positive correlation with NPCA. Further, product vision positively correlates with NPCA and NPD performance, and NPCA positively correlates with NPD performance. In addition, an examination of the mediation effect in terms of Sobel t-test reveals that the NPCA is a significant mediator for the influence of interdepartmental integration on NPD performance. Moreover, this study provides a framework for managing post-M&A integration and closes with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of the research findings.