A Contingency‐Based Approach to the Use of Product Platforms and Modules in New Product Development

To face the challenges of increasing demand for variety, more specific customer demands and shortening product life cycles, firms increasingly adopt mass customization techniques. Two important such techniques are product modularization and product platform development, which allow firms to reach high levels of product variety, and at the same time, keep complexity and its related costs at a limited level. Often modularization and product platform development are treated as variants of the same basic idea. However, even if the concepts are closely related, they also have some fundamental differences, which influence their usefulness and applicability in different settings. One potential shortcoming of existing literature on modularization and product platforms is the present lack of research on their limitations and potential negative effects. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify and explore contingencies influencing the applicability of modularization and product platforms, respectively, taking their different economic effects as a starting point. Moreover, the paper addresses how different organizing solutions are interrelated with the use of modularization and product platform approaches. The empirical observations originate from studies of three Swedish manufacturing firms. The study reveals that important contingencies affecting the applicability of modularization and product platforms are demand side characteristics and the speed of environmental change. Furthermore, it is seen that firms need to organize themselves differently with respect to how they combine modularization and platforms, for example, in terms of degree of centralization, formalization, and allocation of decision‐making authority, and that this poses challenges to the combined use of the two approaches.     

New Product Development in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Pooling Network Resources

Pharmaceutical innovation increasingly involves some pooling of resources of finance, equity, technology, information, and intellectual property between pharmaceutical companies and other organizations. The organizations and their exchanges constitute a network which can be regarded as a growing store of these varied resources preferentially accessible to network members. D. Jane Bower examines some network effects in management decision making in Ciba-Geigy (Switzerland) and Elan Corporation (Ireland). She concludes that participation in a common network has enabled these firms to access a pool of resources of knowledge, experience, and finance. This pool has been generated by past exchanges among network members, including providers of finance, and has increased the network's collective reservoir of knowledge.     

产品质量检验信息管理系统的开发

胜利石油管理局质量监督检验所是下属于胜利石油管理局技术检测中心的质检机构 ,它的主要任务是对油田内部生产以及进入油田物资供应部门的各种产品进行质量检验 ,保证油田的安全生产。质检所日常检验所涉及的产品种类繁多 ,检测信息繁杂、松散 ,检测数据的保存、查询、汇总完全依靠人工完成 ,检测信息不能方便及时的共享 ,大大限制了质量监督对油田生产的作用。产品质量检验信息管理系统正是为适应质检所生产运行的管理以及检测信息的存储、汇总、查询、共享而开发的 ,可将质检所的各类检测报告及相关的数据纳入数据库管理 ,实现检验工作按…     

Product Development as Core Competence: How Formal Product Development Practices Differ for Radical,More Innovative,and Incremental Product Innovations

Although universally recognized as an important consideration in building product development (PD) competency, the effect of a firm's ability to vary its PD practices to develop winning products has been given scant attention in large‐scale, multiorganizational, quantitative studies. This research explores differences in formal new PD practices among three project types—incremental, more innovative, and radical. Using a sample of 380 business units, this research investigates how development practices differ across these three classes of innovation with respect to the formal PD process, project organization, PD strategy, organizational culture, and senior management commitment. Our results diverge from several commonly held beliefs about formal PD processes and the management of radical versus incremental innovations. Our results indicate that radical projects are managed less flexibly than incremental projects. Instead of being an offshoot of less strategic planning, radical projects are just as strategically aligned as incremental projects. Instead of being informally introduced entrepreneurial adventures, radical projects are often the result of more formal ideation methods. While these results may be counterintuitive to suppositional models of how to radical innovation happens, it is the central theme of this research to show how radical innovation actually happens. Our findings also provide a foundation for reexamining the role of control in the management of innovation. As the level of innovativeness increased, so too did the amount of controls imposed—e.g., less flexibility in the development process, more professional, full‐time project leadership, centralized executive oversight for new products, and formal financial assessments of expected NP performance.     

Time-Based Management of the New Product Development Process

This study explored the problem of compressing new product development by focusing on the specific phases of the innovation process. These phases manifest significant qualitative differences that require attention for understanding the complexities of accelerating new product development. Based on data from 35 high-technology companies, Necmi Karagozoglu and Warren Brown identified several different acceleration methods. Results revealed unexpected and at times inconsistent insights than those reflected in the case study and anecdotally based literature, and implied also that some of the well documented approaches to successful new product development need to be replaced with their time-based versions.     

A Report on the Development of a Research Agenda for the Product Development and Management Association

One of the most critical steps in the development of a professional field is the development of a research tradition. The Product Development and Management Association has long been committed to the stimulation of quality research efforts in the field of new products management. Accordingly, to begin the development of a research agenda, PDMA sponsored a colloquium of academic and practitioner researchers. Philip C. Burger, then serving as PDMA's Vice President of Research, organized the meeting and reports on the results of a two and a half day discussion. Some of the topics emphasized include organizational behavior and leadership, dissemination of good practice and the importance of a benchmark study of new product success and failure as starting points.     

Sustaining Complement Quality for Digital Product Platforms: A Case Study of the Philips Hue Ecosystem

Innovation in a digital world increasingly revolves around open platforms that consist of a core technology and a large variety of complementary products developed by an ecosystem of independent complementors. The platform ecosystem literature has mainly focused on indirect network effects arising from the quantity of complements, with little attention to the quality of complements, despite the importance of quality for the complementary value that drives platform ecosystems. Because digital products are malleable and dependent on the ever‐evolving ecosystem, we advance a relational and dynamic conceptualization of complement quality. Drawing on a systematic, in‐depth qualitative case study of the Philips Hue connected lighting platform and its complementary third‐party apps, we study how and why complement quality is sustained over time. By analyzing apps and their updates, we developed a process model that explains pathways through which complement quality is enhanced, maintained, or deteriorates. Changes in the platform core, changes in other ecosystem elements, and idiosyncratic connections by users result in expanding affordances, materializing glitches, and emerging obsolescence. Without further action, glitches and obsolescence lead to deteriorating quality. Joint action of complementors, platform owners, and users is needed to act upon affordances, glitches, and obsolescence, in order to maintain integrity and enhance functionality. This paper contributes to the literature on innovation in platform ecosystems by explaining the dynamic and relational nature of complement quality in a digital platform ecosystem and showing the interdependence of ecosystem members (the triad between platform owner, complementors, and users) in sustained development efforts.     

Top Management Involvement in New Product Development: A Review and Synthesis

Established literature on new product development (NPD) management recognizes top management involvement (TMI) as one of the most critical success factors. With increasing pressure to sustain competitive advantage and growth, NPD activities remain the focus of close interest from top management in many organizations. TMI in the NPD domain is receiving increasing academic attention. Despite its criticality, there is no systematic review of the existing literature to inform and stimulate researchers in the field for further investigation. This paper introduces the current state of literature on TMI in NPD, synthesizes important findings, and identifies the gaps and deficiencies in this research stream. The contents of the selected articles, which investigated TMI in NPD, are analyzed based on the type of the study, level of analysis, research methodology, operationalization of TMI, and main findings. Additionally, other studies, which did not directly investigate TMI and support in NPD, but were sufficiently related, are briefly summarized. As a result of this detailed literature review, it can be stated that both exploratory and relational studies provide rich evidence on the critical role of top management in NPD. However, the identified gaps and deficiencies in this research stream call for a better theoretical understanding and well‐defined constructs of TMI in the NPD domain for different levels of analysis for future studies.     

Technology Exploitation Paths: Combining Technological and Complementary Resources in New Product Development and Licensing

Technological resources in the form of patents, trade secrets, and know‐how have become key assets for modern enterprises. This paper addresses a critical issue in technology and innovation management, namely, the commercial exploitation of technological resources resulting from research and development (R&D) investments. Extracting economic value from these resources by maximizing the benefits for shareholders is an extremely challenging task because technological resources are intangible, idiosyncratic, uncertain, predominantly tacit, and with poorly defined property rights. In their attempt to extract the maximum value from their technological resources, firms increasingly combine their internal exploitation through new product development (NPD) with external exploitation through licensing. However, most existing studies on NPD and technology licensing have treated the two exploitation paths independently and in isolation, which has resulted in two separate research streams using different theories and addressing different managerial challenges. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to filling this gap by developing and testing a comprehensive conceptual framework that simultaneously considers the antecedents affecting the successful implementation of NPD and licensing strategies as well as their consequences on firm profitability. The paper in particular investigates the effects of the interplay between technological resources and three types of complementary resources, marketing, manufacturing, and relational. We test the model using structural equation modeling on a sample of 733 Spanish manufacturing firms observed from 2003 to 2007. The data provide support for the existence of different paths to market firm technologies: an internal path, whereby the ownership of technological resources fully explains NPD performance, and an external path, whereby high intensity of marketing and relational resources reinforces the positive effect of technological resources on licensing performance. This sustains the relevance of the resource‐based value‐enhancing effects of complementary resources in licensing, as opposed to the motivation‐reducing effects advanced by transaction cost‐based literature. Moreover, the empirical analysis shows a substitution effect between NPD and licensing, whereby their simultaneous pursuit at intense levels is associated with lower profit margins. This provides evidence of the much theorized, but seldom tested, rent dissipation effect. These findings offer several contributions to research on licensing, NPD, open innovation, and the resource‐based view of the firm. On a managerial level, they suggest that achieving maximum value from proprietary technologies may not entail exploiting them both through external and internal paths. Managers are also informed that the resource combinations that enhance licensing performance include marketing and relational resources.     

石油工程监督人力资源管理系统的研发

阐述了石油工程监督人力资源管理系统建立的目的、意义及作用,分析讨论了该系统的基本结构设计、用户操作平台及系统的应用情况.     

建筑施工企业人力资源开发与管理

施工企业在政治、经济体制改革不断深化的过程中,一直面临着许多困难和制约,一方面效率和效益低下,管理措施不力,人才流失严重,事业发展缓慢;另一方面人力资源配置不合理,造成人力资源的浪费.研究我国施工企业人力资源开发与管理问题势在必行,探讨我国施工企业人力资源开发、配置和有效利用的问题,对我国施工企业持续发展具有重要意义.文章从人力资源在建筑市场竞争中的地位出发,分析了建筑施工企业目前在人力资源现状,以及人力资源开发与管理中存在的问题及其形成的原因,提出了增强建筑施工企业人力资源管理竞争力的具体措施.     

论高校图书馆人力资源的合理开发与和谐管理

文章阐述高校图书馆如何有效地开发和利用人力资源，创新人事管理，健全人才的教育和激励机制。     

New Product Development Performance and the Interaction of Cross-Functional Integration and Knowledge Management

Previous research on cross-functional integration between research and development (R&D) and marketing has focused on the development of appropriate structural modes and levels of integration and cooperation across the R&D–marketing interface. A gap in the previous research in this area has been the failure to investigate the integration of information from past related product development projects (i.e., knowledge management). In this investigation of R&D–marketing integration, variables from the emerging research literature on organizational learning and knowledge management are examined. By simultaneously investigating the effects of knowledge management variables and R&D–marketing integration, this gap in the literature is addressed. The results demonstrate that the combined effects of R&D–marketing integration and knowledge management in the form of recording, retrieving, and reviewing information from past projects results in interaction effects. In 8 of 18 tests interactions were found. In 6 of 18 tests these resulted in the form of amplification effects with dependent variables such as product prototype development proficiency, product launch proficiency, technological core competency fit, and design change frequency.