Improvement reviews in new product development

This research examines how organizations can use improvement reviews to enhance learning from product development experiences. We review learning related literature and highlight learning barriers that firms should attempt to minimize when conducting reviews. We then discuss two studies aimed at better understanding the effectiveness of improvement reviews. The first study suggests that improvement reviews can facilitate learning by leading to a reduction in the recurrence of people-related problems, though reviews had no impact on reducing market or product related problems. The second study involved depth interviews with new product developers. Interview comments provide insights into improvement review best practices and shed light on why improvement reviews are sometimes ineffective. A set of managerial recommendations is provided.