Product innovativeness from the firm's perspective: Its dimensions and their relation with project selection and performance

There has recently been tremendous interest in product innovativeness. However, it seems that we need a better understanding of exactly what product innovativeness means. This article presents a conceptual framework to clarify its meaning. The framework first distinguishes customer and firm perspectives on product innovativeness. From the customer's perspective, innovation attributes, adoption risks, and levels of change in established behavior patterns are regarded as forms of product newness. Within the firm's perspective, environmental familiarity and project-firm fit, and technological and marketing aspects are proposed as dimensions of product innovativeness.
Next, the article offers a tentative empirical test of the proposed dimensions of product innovativeness from the firm's perspective. A well-known dataset of 262 industrial new product projects is used to: I) clarify the product innovativeness construct and examine its underlying dimensions, 2) examine the relation of product innovativeness with the decision to pursue or kill the project, and 3) examine the relationship between product innovativeness and product performance. Five dimensions of product innovativeness are found which have distinct relations with the Go/No Go decision and product performance: market familiarity, technological familiarity, marketing fit, technological fit, and new marketing activities. Most strikingly, measures of fit are related to product performance, whereas measures of familiarity are not.
The article concludes that researchers need to be careful about which definitions and measures of product innovativeness they employ, because depending on their choice they may arrive at different findings. New product practitioners are encouraged to evaluate new product opportunities primarily in terms of their fit with their firm's resources and skills rather than the extent to which they are "close to home".     

R&D Project Selection Strategy: an empirical study in Spain

The author has investigated the role played by project selection methods in defining a firm's technology strategy, as exemplified by a sample of innovative companies in Spain. The information was collected by a combination of questionnaire and interview with key personnel.
The author was able to classify strategies into four groups: (1) a planning strategy, essentially a negotiation comprising top-down and bottom-up elements; (2) an economic strategy in which a large number of economic criteria set in advance by top management are used to evaluate projects; (3) a market strategy in which R&D is seen more or less as an adjunct to the Marketing function, which defines the products needed and negotiates the programme with top management; (4) a technical strategy, used in circumstances in which technological innovation is essential and in which, therefore, economic factors take a subsidiary place.
The author's data show that in companies operating a planning strategy project selection methods of various, perhaps ad hoc kinds play a key role in reaching a company consensus. For those using an economic strategy the selection criteria are predetermined and selection methods inflexible. In the case of the market strategy, evaluation methods are used solely to help to rank projects prior to selection. Firms employing the technical strategy clearly base their decisions purely on the technical merit of the various projects put up for implementation.
The paper includes information on the types of selection method used, broken down by company size and other similar criteria, and comparisons with practice in the USA, France and some other countries.     

Exploring New Product Development Project Review Practices*

Most organizations use new product development (NPD) processes that consist of activities and review points. Activities basically solve problems and gather and produce information about the viability of successfully completing the project. Interspersed between the development activities are review points where project information is reviewed and a decision is made to either go on to the next stage of the process, stop it prior to completion, or hold it until more information is gathered and a better decision can be made. The review points are for controlling risk, prioritizing projects, and allocating resources, and the review team typically is cross‐disciplinary, comprising senior managers from marketing, finance, research and development (R&D), or manufacturing. Over the past four decades, research has greatly advanced knowledge with respect to NPD activities; however, much less is known about review practices. For this reason, the present paper reports findings of a study on NPD project review practices from 425 Product Development & Management Association (PDMA) members. The focus is on three decision points in the NPD process common across organizations (i.e., initial screen, prior to development and testing, and prior to commercialization). In this paper, the number of (1) review points used, (2) review criteria, (3) decision makers on review committees and the proficiency with which various evaluation criteria are used are compared across incremental and radical projects and across functional areas (i.e., marketing, technical, financial). Furthermore, the associations between these NPD review practices and new product performance are examined. Selected results show that more review points are used for radical NPD projects than incremental ones, and this is related to a relatively lower rate of survival for radical projects. The findings also show that the number of criteria used to evaluate NPD projects increases as NPD projects progress and that the number of review team members grows over the stages, too. Surprisingly, the results reveal that more criteria are used to evaluate incremental NPD projects than radical ones. As expected, managers appear to more proficiently use evaluation criteria when making project continuation/termination decisions for incremental projects; they use these criteria less proficiently during the development of radical projects, precisely when proficiency is most critical. At each review point, technical criteria were found to be the most frequently used type for incremental projects, and financial criteria were the most commonly used type for radical ones. Importantly, only review proficiency is significantly associated with performance; the number of review points, review team size, and number of review criteria are not associated with new product performance. Furthermore, only the coefficient for proficiently using marketing criteria was significantly related to new product program performance; the proficiency of using financial and technical information has no association with performance. Finally, across the three focal review points of the NPD process in this study, only the coefficient for proficiency at the first review point, (i.e., the initial screen) is significantly greater than zero. The results are discussed with respect to research and managerial practice, and future research directions are offered.     

Managing complex development projects: arenas, knowledge processes and time

The literature on project management has been dominated by techniques and methods for separating activities and making thought out plans. Closely related to this research stream is the research on product development, which seems to advocate somewhat of a different strategy where managing projects is a matter of enabling the crossing of functions and knowledge bases. This paper attempts to integrate these two lines of research.
The paper is based on two in–depth case studies of project management in product development contexts. The projects under study were highly complex and consisted of multiple interrelated parts, which called for 'tightly coupled' organizational solutions. From our point of view, much effort by the project management teams was put into establishing a project that was responsive and where participating local units were oriented toward various 'global' measures.
In our conception, the overall deadline seemed to have played an important role for promoting communal and interactive problem solving. Furthermore, the deadline emphasized the need for global arenas where the interactive problem solving could take place. It is argued that time–based controls set a global time for the project. The paper also demonstrates the importance of various global arenas, such as testing activities and project management forums, in order to keep track of time limits and to trigger global knowledge processes. Furthermore, based on the notion of 'separation' and 'coupling' of sub–systems and project phases, the paper suggests a model identifying four types of project organizations. The paper contributes to the knowledge on project management in complex product development.     

Networks and the Decision to Persist with Underperforming R&D Projects

Drawing on aspiration level theory and the networks literature, this paper develops a model toward decision makers' persistence with underperforming R&D projects based on the perceived properties of their personal network. The assumption is that positive feedback from network partners motivates persistence, and that this effect is multiplied when the decision makers' network is larger and denser, when network ties are predominantly strong, and when communication frequency within the network is high. The model is tested by a field experiment and conjoint methodology. Analysis of 1632 persistence decisions nested within 51 scientists responsible for R&D projects reveals that more positive feedback enhances persistence of underperforming R&D projects, and that this effect becomes stronger with increasing network size, network density, and communication frequency. These findings extend the project management literature by focusing on the social environment of the decision maker as one so far neglected factor in empirical studies on persistence decisions. Moreover, this study is among the first to investigate contingency relationships between feedback received from network partners and network structure. Finally, while most studies have emphasized that individuals and organizations can profit from their engagements in social networks, this paper suggests a potential dark side of networks by showing that networks can encourage decision makers to persist with their investment in an underperforming—and potentially failing—project. These results can help project managers involved in networking activities to better understand the effects of these activities on their decision policies, and thus draw better and more accurate decisions. Second, this study provides insights into how organizational strategy with respect to dissemination of R&D results and involvement of the organization's R&D managers in the scientific community influences the persistence of underperforming R&D projects, and thereby the organization's R&D expenditures. This can assist top managers to design financial controls and allocate financial resources to managers of underperforming R&D projects in line with the organization's networking strategy.     

A Longitudinal Examination of How Champions Influence Others to Support Their Projects

The image of the project champion fighting corporate inertia, rallying support, and leading a project to success makes for a great story, but that story may not reveal the true nature of the champion's role. All those oft-told tales about champions fail to provide hard evidence of the techniques that champions use, the activities they perform, and the effects that champions have on project success.
Stephen K. Markham addresses this knowledge gap in a study that examines how champions influence other people and what effects champions have on projects and the people those projects involve. The study uses responses from 53 champions of innovation projects in four large firms as well as team members from those projects. Rather than look at the champions' work on project tasks, the study focuses on the influence champions have on other people to support their projects.
The results of the study only partially support the idea that champions affect projects by influencing people. In the four firms studied, champions use cooperative rather than confrontative tactics to influence other people. However, the champions' choice of influence tactics does not affect the level of compliance or the willingness to participate in the project that those people demonstrate. On the other hand, the champions appear to have a strong influence on their target's behavior if the champions enjoy positive personal relationships with those people.
In general, the tactics used by the champions do not seem to play an important role in the projects studied. From the perspective of the team members, the results of this study do not support the notion that champions make a positive contribution to project performance. However, the champions in this study consistently hold a more positive view of the project than those of the team members.     

Does Strategic Planning Enhance or Impede Innovation and Firm Performance?*

Does strategic planning enhance or impede innovation and firm performance? The current literature provides contradictory views. This study extends the resource‐advantage theory to examine the conditions in which strategic planning increases or decreases the number of new product development projects and firm performance. The authors test the theoretical model by collecting data from 227 firms. The empirical evidence suggests that more strategic planning and more new product development (NPD) projects lead to better firm performance. Firms with organizational redundancy benefit more from strategic planning than firms with less organizational redundancy. Increasing R&D intensity boosts both the number of NPD projects and firm performance. Strategic planning is more effective in larger firms with higher R&D intensity for increasing the number of NPD projects. The results reported in this study also consist of several findings that challenge the traditional views of strategic planning. The evidence suggests that strategic planning impedes, not enhances, the number of NPD projects. Larger firms benefit less, not more, from strategic planning for improving firm performance. Larger firms do not necessarily create more NPD projects. Increasing organizational redundancy has no effect on the number of NPD projects. These empirical results provide important strategic implications. First, managers should be aware that, in general, formal strategic planning decreases the number of NPD projects for innovation management. Improvised rather than planned activities are more conducive to creating NPD project ideas. Moreover, innovations tend to emerge from improvisational processes, during which the impromptu execution of NPD activities without planning spurs “thinking outside the box,” which enhances the process of creating NPD project ideas. Therefore, more flexible strategic plans that accommodate potential improvisation may be needed in NPD management since innovation‐related activities cannot be planned precisely due to the unexpected jolts and contingencies of the NPD process. Second, large firms with high levels of R&D intensity can overcome the negative effect of strategic planning on the number of NPD projects. Specifically, a firm's abundant resources, when allocated and deployed for NPD activities, signal the high priority and importance of the NPD activities and thus motivate employees to acquire, collect, and gather customer and technical knowledge, which leads to creating more NPD projects. Finally, managers must understand that managing strategic planning and generating NPD project ideas are beneficial to the ultimate outcome of firm performance despite the adverse relationship between strategic planning and the number of NPD projects.     

Management of dispersed product development teams: the role of information technologies

In recent years, international corporations such as IBM are increasingly relying on dispersed R&D teams in order to keep pace with resource availability and the demands of global markets. The advantages of this approach arise mainly from the utilization of differences in personnel costs and gaining access to a broader knowledge base to satisfy the demands of international clients. The disadvantages of teams of this kind are obvious: geographic distances, differences in culture and work habits as well as the necessity to bridge time zones place greater demands on communication, synchronization and management.
The application of specific project management methods and the intensive use of information technology (IT) lessens the disadvantages in transnational development projects. Recently completed projects involving large-scale commercial software development at IBM demonstrate the potentials of IT in transnational development. The authors advocate the application of IT adapted to specific situations. The central fields of application of IT in dispersed R&D teams are the development of a personal network, the promotion of creativity, the exchange of technical information, and the coordination of decentralized project activities.     

New product success factors: A comparison of 'kills' versus successes and failures

The paper reports an analysis of the characteristics of those new projects that are killed, that is, terminated before commercialisation. Such projects constitute the majority of new product projects. The authors' aim was to learn from the differences between 'kills' and those that are commercialised. The latter may, of course, turn out to be successes or failures.
Their sample consisted of 250 new projects of which 123 were ultimately successful, 80 failed and 47 were kills. Two hypotheses were tested: that kills and failures had similar characteristics and that kills differed from successes in the way that failures differed from successes. Four groups of multidimensional project characteristics were measured: product advantage, market attractiveness, competitive situation, and synergy/familiarity.
The results showed that neither hypothesis was generally supported, The patterns of characteristics observed were complex but were unravelled through a computer model simulating how managers perform the evaluation process. It showed that the results could be explained on the basis that errors could be made in evaluation. For example, it is difficult to evaluate product advantage. Surprisingly, competitive situation is not a discriminator between successes, failures and kills but managers treat it as if it were. Some characteristics are perceived by managers to be negative although they are, in fact, favourable to project success.
The authors claim that these results should lead to better allocation of R&D resources among proposed projects.     

The roles of R&D team leaders in Korea: a contingent approach

This study empirically examines the relationship between the role of R&D project leaders and their team performance using data from 87 project teams in 6 R&D organizations in Korea. The results reveal that:
(1) R&D project leaders played five different roles in performing their jobs – strategic planner, team builder, gatekeeper, technical expert, and champion;
(2) All but the champion role of a leader is positively related with project team performance;
(3) However, this relationship between the role of leader and project team performance varies according to the characteristics of R&D project teams and their tasks.
Specifically, it becomes important for a leader to focus less on the team building role as the team gets older. The team building role of a leader, however, is more important for higher performance of relatively certain R&D projects, while for uncertain R&D projects, the strategic planning role appears to be more crucial. Based on these results, this study discusses several managerial and theoretical issues related to the role of a leader in R&D project teams.     

Definition of innovation projects in small firms: A Spanish study

Small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) are the main holders of the European economy and innovation projects are essential tools for SMEs to ensure their growth. A high percentage of innovation projects implemented by SMEs lacks planning and initial management, which causes the appearance of important problems for the SMEs survival. The authors have confirmed with a field study of 72 Spanish small firms that a lot of these problems arise from an incomplete project definition, so it is necessary to help SMEs to have a specific methodology that is appropriate to their own characteristics and projects. The statistical analysis shows how the project management knowledge helps to a better project definition, contributing to the project alignment with the company strategy. Also, it reveals other problems related to the project definition as planning, budget, market and financing. Of this analysis, it concludes that the definition phase supports the other phases and is essential in order to achieve project success. This paper presents an ‘integration model of factors’ that helps SMEs in the management of the definition phase of their innovation projects. This model relates the various areas of analysis needed to ensure their integration at the project definition. The relationships between the different model areas have been defined, showing the way to integrate the technical, economic and strategic outlooks of project objectives management in the definition phase of the project. This model has been implemented in 21 new innovation project definitions. The users' valuation has been very positive with a 90.4% of success and all of the model users are interested in implementing the model again in next projects. The main advantages highlighted were user‐friendliness, intuitive model and easy application.     

Dimensions of uncertainty and their moderating effect on new product development project performance

In this study, we measure the dimensions of uncertainty, starting from the definitions constructed for and generally used in innovation projects. We then evaluate their direct and indirect effects on the performance of product and service development projects. Four dimensions of uncertainty are delimited with satisfactory validity and reliability, suggesting a differential moderating effect of the four types of uncertainty (technical and project uncertainty, market uncertainty, fuzziness and complexity) depending on the performance dimension (effectiveness and efficiency) and co‐moderator (project methods and human resource adequacy). Of the four dimensions explored, technical and project, and market uncertainty are true moderators and have the largest interactive effect, fuzziness has a strong direct effect on both performance dimensions whereas complexity weakly directly influences effectiveness. The latter two also influence the relations between performance and the factors related to human resources and project management methods.     

When Research Meets Development: Antecedents and Implications of Transfer Speed

This paper focuses on the organization of new product development in large, R&D‐intensive firms. In these firms, research and development activities are often separated. Research is conducted in dedicated research projects at specialized research labs. Once research results are achieved by research projects, they are transferred to business units for further development and commercialization. We investigate the speed whereby research projects transfer their first research results to business units (hereafter: transfer speed). In particular, we analyze the antecedents and performance implications of transfer speed. Based on data of 503 research projects from a European R&D intensive manufacturing firm, our results suggest that a fast transfer speed (as measured by the time it takes for a research project to develop and transfer its first research result to business units) is associated with a better research performance (as measured by the total number of transfers the research project generates). Moreover, we find that different types of external R&D partners—science‐based and market‐based partners—play distinct roles in speeding up project first research transfers. While market‐based partnerships (i.e., customers and suppliers) generally contribute to a faster transfer of first research results, science‐based partnerships (i.e., universities and research institutions) only speed up first research transfers of technologically very complex projects. Our results also show that early patent filings by research projects accelerate first research transfers.     

Linking learning and knowledge creation to project success in Six Sigma projects: An empirical investigation

This study investigates the impact of two organizational antecedents, (1) Six Sigma resources (technical) and (2) team psychological safety (social), on learning behaviour and knowledge creation and, in turn, on the success of Six Sigma process improvement projects. The paper proposes an integrated model to explain process improvement implementation success through two learning activities undertaken by Six Sigma project teams: Knowing-what and Knowing-how. The conceptualization of these knowledge types in this research is different from usual conceptualization as it represents the knowledge brought into projects through various phases of Six Sigma projects. The three hypotheses proposed in the model were tested using the data collected from 52 Six Sigma project teams from a single organization. Regression analysis showed psychological safety affects project performance through knowing-how. Regression and bootstrapping analyses showed resources influence project performance through the combined mediation of knowing-what and knowing-how.The paper provides an interdisciplinary treatment of knowledge management in process improvement teams, and offers a research model demonstrating how Six Sigma project teams promote deliberate organizational learning. By doing so, this study empirically establishes the notion that technical and social supports jointly impact the success of operations management initiatives such as Six Sigma through learning. The limitations of the study along with the future research directions are highlighted.     

An investigation into the managerial roles and career paths of gatekeepers and project supervisors in a major R & D facility

This study investigates the role of gatekeepers in the transfer of information within a single R&D location by comparing directly the performance of project groups with and without gatekeepers. The results show that gatekeepers performed a linking role only for projects performing tasks that were 'locally-oriented' while 'universally-oriented' tasks were most effectively linked to external areas by direct project member communication. Gatekeepers also appear to facilitate external communication by their locally-oriented project colleagues. A follow-up study five years later showed that almost all gatekeeping project leaders had been promoted up the managerial ladder; in contrast, one half of the non-gatekeeping project leaders had ascended the technical ladder. This implies that higher managerial levels demand strong interpersonal as well as technical skills.     

NPD Planning Activities and Innovation Performance: The Mediating Role of Process Management and the Moderating Effect of Product Innovativeness

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of planning and control on the performance of new product development (NPD) projects. It is hypothesized that (1) thorough business planning at the beginning of a project creates a basis for proficient project and risk planning; (2) the proficiency of project planning, risk planning, and process management activities each improves innovation performance directly; (3) the relationship of planning and success is mediated by process management; and (4) the strength of these relationships is moderated by uncertainty, as determined by the degree of innovativeness. To test the hypotheses, data from 132 NPD projects were collected and analyzed. A measurement model was used to establish valid and reliable constructs, a path model to test the main effects, and a multiple-moderated regression analysis for the moderator hypotheses. The results suggest that the proficiency of project planning and process management is important predictors of NPD performance. Specifically, project risk planning and goal stability throughout the development process are found to enhance performance significantly. Business planning proves to be an important antecedent of the more development-related planning activities such as project planning and risk planning. Additionally, the results lend support to the hypotheses regarding the mediating role of process management in the planning–performance relationship. Project planning and risk planning support the quality of process management and thus impact NPD performance indirectly. Only to a limited extent are the strengths of these relationships moderated by the degree of innovativeness of the NPD project.     

The relative importance of project success dimensions

Traditionally, the success of a project is assessed using internal measures such as technical and operational goals, and meeting schedule and budget. More recently, it has been recognized that several other measures should be used to define project success. These measures reflect external effectiveness: the project's impact on its customers, and on the developing organization itself.
In our study of 110 defense projects performed by Israeli industry, we used a multidimensional approach to measure the success of defense projects. Based on previous studies, we defined four dimensions of success: meeting design goals ; benefits to the customer ; benefits to the developing organization ; and benefits to the defense and national infrastructure . For each project, we asked three different stakeholders (the customer, the developing organization, and the coordinating office within the Ministry of Defense) for their views on the relative importance of these dimensions of success. Analysis of the data revealed that the dimension benefits to the customer is by far the most important success dimension. The second in importance is meeting design goals . The other two dimensions are relatively unimportant.     

Improving Supplier New Product Development Performance: The Role of Supplier Development

Suppliers play an increasingly central role in helping firms achieve their new product development (NPD) goals. The literature implicitly assumes that suppliers are able to meet or exceed the quality standards and technological expectations of the firm, and yet, in practice, suppliers often lack the technological capabilities needed to undertake collaborative NPD. In such situations, a firm may choose to intervene and actively develop the supplier's technological and product development capabilities. We develop a theoretical framework that conceptualizes supplier development activities within interorganizational NPD projects as part of a bilateral knowledge‐sharing process: design recommendations, technical specifications, and new technology flow from supplier to the firm, and in turn, the firm can implement supplier development activities to upgrade the supplier's technological capabilities. Antecedents (supplier responsibility, skills similarity, single sourcing strategy) and consequences of supplier development activities (on supplier, product, and project performance) are examined using a sample of 153 interorganizational NPD projects within UK manufacturers. We find broad support for our hypotheses. In particular, we show that the relational rents (in the form of improved product and project performance) attained from supplier development activities in new product development are not achieved directly, but rather indirectly, via improvements in the supplier's creative and technological capabilities. Our results emphasize the importance of adopting a strategic view of the potential returns available from investing in the NPD capabilities of key suppliers, and provide clues about underlying reasons for the suboptimal experiences of many companies' collaborative NPD projects.     

New Market Creation for Breakthrough Innovations: Enabling and Constraining Mechanisms

While the technological development associated with breakthrough innovation (BI) is truly challenging, creating markets to stimulate their use may be an even more daunting barrier to successful commercialization. Co‐development partners, distribution channel agents, and ultimate users are all required to adopt new processes and to change behaviors in many cases, and the outcomes are unknown. In this paper, the processes and challenges associated with creating new markets for BIs are explored in a qualitative prospective cross‐case comparison of 12 breakthrough projects under development in 10 large established companies. A number of activities that take place in implicit fashion that create both enabling and constraining mechanisms for BIs are observed. The data suggest, for example, that the earliest application choices that scientists make in the project's development ultimately affect the revenue model, that scientists are unaware of the impact of these decisions, that business model development is a very exploratory process, that criteria used to choose initial market entry points conflict with the expectations of operating units, and that the concept of a killer application can be rather dangerous to the health and well‐being of a BI in its commercial infancy. It is argued that new market creation is the result of managing a specific set of events and activities, which are identified in a grounded theoretic fashion. The companies studied, however, were neither fully aware of nor systematically attentive to these activities. A framework is presented of enabling and constraining mechanisms that teams and organizations impose through the processes and decisions they take in the course of the project's development, and a series of propositions regarding the dynamics of successful new market creation for BIs is offered. The implications of these results are far‐reaching. These results show that market creation for BIs may require as much time and investment as their technical development. We do not find evidence of large established organizations’ awareness of or willingness to make these investments as readily as they invest in technical development. The result is research and development labs at large established firms with stockpiles of potentially game‐changing technologies. To evolve a mature BI commercialization competency, a firm must recognize and address the implications for managerial processes, for personnel recruitment, for setting leaders’ expectations, and for developing appropriate performance metrics for those responsible for market creation that go beyond technical discovery and engineering development. Implications for each are discussed.     

Individual differences, environmental scanning, innovation framing, and champion behavior: key predictors of project performance

Although increasing evidence points to the importance of champions for keeping product innovation ideas alive and thriving, little is known about how champions identify potential product innovation ideas, how they present these ideas to gain much needed support from key stakeholders, and their impact on innovation project performance over time. Jane M. Howell and Christine M. Shea address this knowledge gap by using measures of individual differences, environmental scanning, innovation framing and champion behavior to predict the performance of 47 product innovation projects. Champion behavior was defined as expressing confidence in the innovation, involving and motivating others to support the innovation, and persisting under adversity. Interviews with 47 champions were conducted to collect information about the innovation projects and the champions' tendency to frame the innovation as an opportunity or threat. Survey data were obtained from three sources: 47 champions provided information on their personal characteristics (locus of control and breadth of interest) and activities (environmental scanning), 47 division managers subjectively assessed project performance at two points in time, and 237 innovation team members rated the frequency of champion behavior. The results revealed that an internal locus of control orientation was positively related to framing the innovation as an opportunity, and breadth of interest was positively related to environmental scanning. Environmental scanning of documents and framing the innovation as a threat was negatively related to champion behavior, while environmental scanning through people was positively related to champion behavior. Champion behavior positively predicted project performance over a one‐year interval. Overall, the findings suggest that in scanning the environment for new ideas, the most effective source of information is the champion's personal network of people inside and outside the organization. Also, the simple labeling of an idea as a threat appears to diminish a champion's perceived influence and erode credibility in promoting an innovation. From the perspective of division managers, champions make a positive contribution to project performance over time, reinforcing the crucial role that champions play in new product development process.