Project Management Characteristics and New Product Survival

We develop a conceptual model of new product development (NPD) based on seminal and review articles in order to answer the question, “What project management characteristics will foster the development of new products that are more likely to survive in the marketplace?” Our model adopts Ruekert and Walker's theoretical framework of situational dimensions, structural/process dimensions, and outcome dimensions as an underlying structure. We conceptualize their situational dimensions more narrowly as project management dimensions, allowing us to examine more specifically how project management practices affect the NPD process. In our model, project management dimensions include project manager style, project manager skills, and senior management support. Structural/process dimensions include cross‐functional integration and planning proficiency. Outcome dimensions include process proficiency and new product survival. Our empirical analysis finds support for 20 hypotheses, a reversal of one hypothesis, and nonsignificant results for one hypothesis. These results show that projects are best led by managers with strong technical, marketing, and management skills, using a participative style and enjoying early and continuous support from senior management. These project management dimensions promote cross‐functional integration and planning, which are important to process proficiency and new product survival. Our study suggests two broad conclusions. First, it confirms the links in the extant literature between situational (project management) dimensions, structural/process dimensions, and outcome dimensions in NPD. Second, firms can improve cross‐functional integration and planning through various project management practices. Generally, we find that firms interested in improving both proficiency in their development process and the survival rate of new products should take steps to promote cross‐functional integration and to improve their planning processes. While the linkage between cross‐functional integration and NPD outcomes is well established in the literature, the impact of the planning process on NPD outcomes is a research area ripe with opportunity. Our study highlights three aspects of planning that contribute to NPD outcomes. Plans should be detailed, team members should participate actively in the planning process, and teams should be given flexibility and autonomy to respond to unanticipated issues as they appear.     

兴业咨询:空中客车中国总装线项目——“空客天津A320、A330系列飞机中国总装线及交付中心定制厂房项目”全过程工程咨询管理

2005年12月,时任国务院总理温家宝同志访问法国期间,国家发改委与空客公司签署了《加强工业合作谅解备忘录》,双方确定了要加强包括在华合资建设A320系列飞机总装线在内的航空领域合作框架。2006年6月,国家发改委和空客公司共同宣布:合资建设的空客A320系列飞机总装线项目选址天津滨海新区。天津市政府和中国航空第一集团公司、中国航空第二集团公司共同推动,成立天津中天航空工业投资有限公司。     

Development Resource Planning: Complexity of Product Development and the Capacity to Launch New Products

Overcommitment of development capacity or development resource deficiencies are important problems in new product development (NPD). Existing approaches to development resource planning have largely neglected the issue of resource magnitude required for NPD. This research aims to fill the void by developing a simple higher‐level aggregate model based on an intuitive idea: The number of new product families that a firm can effectively undertake is bound by the complexity of its products or systems and the total amount of resources allocated to NPD. This study examines three manufacturing companies to verify the proposed model. The empirical results confirm the study's initial hypothesis: The more complex the product family, the smaller the number of product families that are launched per unit of revenue. Several suggestions and implications for managing NPD resources are discussed, such as how this study's model can establish an upper limit for the capacity to develop and launch new product families.     

A Consumer-Based Approach to Designing Product Line Extensions

A high proportion of new product introductions entail line extensions (e.g., new flavors, sizes, convenience packs, features) rather than totally new products. An attendant problem with line extending involves the possibility of cannibalization of the firm's current products. Paul Green and Abba Krieger describe an approach for designing line extensions that employs consumer tradeoff data and a variety of search heuristics to find "optimal" extensions that explicitly consider the cannibalization of current offerings. The methodology is applied to a case in which an agricultural chemicals firm is introducing a new soybean herbicide.     

Financial Evaluation of the Product Line

When decisions are being made about adding or dropping a product, most managers will make a financial evaluation of the product and they may try to get some sense of the riskiness of the decision. They will also probably consider the effect of the add/drop decision on other products in the line. Seldom, however, do they consider the risk of a product mix decision in the context of the risk level of the overall product line. Professors Rabino and Wright argue that product managers should take a leaf from the analytical book of financial analysts and calculate a "product Beta" that shows the impact of the risk of the individual product on the risk of the whole portfolio of products. They also suggest some other ways of sharpening the financial picture in what are often strictly marketing evaluations. This is Professor Rabino's second article in JPIM . As in the previous one he coauthored with Howard Moskowitz, this one adds some interesting analytical methodology to managerial decision making.     

Principles of New Product Management: Exploring the Beliefs of Product Practitioners

Conventional wisdom might lead us to conclude that the various disciplines involved in product development and management are often at cross-purposes. For example, practitioners from R&D and engineering have been known to suggest that marketing fails to understand the technical trade-offs involved in product management decisions. Conversely, marketing professionals sometimes complain that their technology-oriented colleagues pursue product development initiatives without adequate market awareness. And practitioners from both sides of this debate have asserted that research on new product development tends to be of the ivory tower variety, with little or no relevance for industry. Are such complaints valid? Perhaps it is time for a reality check. By searching academic literature on product development, Roger J. Calantone, C. Anthony Di Benedetto, and Ted Haggblom have compiled a list of 40 fundamental principles of new product development. This list forms the basis for a survey of new product practitioners from marketing and technical disciplines. The study provides a means for assessing whether practitioners agree with the fundamental principles of new product development that are identified in current academic literature. By obtaining responses from both marketing and technical professionals, the survey also sheds light on whether those two groups hold fundamentally different beliefs regarding new product development. The survey results reveal strong overall agreement among practitioners regarding these fundamental principles of new product management. Managers believe that 80% of the principles are either usually or almost always true. In other words, the survey results support the idea that the academic community is pursuing research issues that are relevant to practitioners, and that they are reaching valid conclusions. There are only a few cases in which the responses from the technical and marketing practitioners differ. Those disagreements probably result from differences in the basic orientations of the two groups. For example, it is not surprising that marketing managers would be more likely to agree that “product users and the marketplace form the most important source for new product ideas,” while technical managers more strongly support the idea that “radically new technologies constitute an important source of new product ideas.” The respondents noted overall disagreement with only a few of the 40 principles. In many of these cases, the academic literature has reached mixed conclusions. In other words, these “principles” might actually be oversimplifications, and further research is probably needed before we can fully understand the issues involved.     

探索大型建筑企业在地铁BT项目运作中的管理新模式——以深圳地铁5号线BT项目为例

BT模式是在近年的工程实践中出现的一种投融资建设管理新模式,深受我国政府重视.BT模式在深圳地铁5号线工程中得到了实际应用,不仅很好地解决了投资方资金瓶颈问题,而且有效地提高了建筑企业施工组织管理水平,显著地提高了建筑企业物资集中采购规模效益.文章通过对深圳地铁5号线BT项目案例进行分析,研究了大型建筑企业在地铁BT项目运作中管理新模式,分析其优势和不足之处,提出了解决的办法和建议.     

New Product Portfolio Management: Practices and Performance

Effective portfolio management is vital to successful product innovation. Portfolio management is about making strategic choices—which markets, products, and technologies our business will invest in. It is about resource allocation—how you will spend your scarce engineering, R&D, and marketing resources. It focuses on project selection—on which new product or development projects you choose from the many opportunities you face. And it deals with balance—having the right balance between numbers of projects you do and the resources or capabilities you have available. In this article, the authors reveal the findings of their extensive study of portfolio management in industry. This study, the first of its kind, reports the portfolio management practices and performance of 205 U.S. companies. Its overall objective was to gain insights into what portfolio methods companies use, whether they are satisfied with them, the performance results they achieve with the different approaches, and suggestions for others who are considering implementing portfolio management. The research first assesses management's satisfaction with portfolio methods they employ and notes that some firms face major problems in portfolio management. Next, businesses are grouped or clustered into four groups according to management's view of portfolio management: Cowboys, Crossroads, Duds, and Benchmark businesses. The research first assesses management's satisfaction with portfolio methods they employ and notes that some firms face major problems in portfolio management. Next, businesses are grouped or clustered into four groups according to management's view of portfolio management: Cowboys, Crossroads, Duds, and Benchmark businesses. Various performance metrics are used to gauge the performance of the business's portfolio. The results reveal major differences between the best and the worst. Benchmark businesses are the top performers. Their new product portfolios consistently score the best in terms of performance—high-value projects, aligned with the business's strategy, the right balance of projects, and the right number of projects. The authors take a closer look at these benchmark businesses to determine what distinguishes their projects from the rest. Benchmark businesses employ a much more formal, explicit method to managing their portfolio of projects. They rely on clear, well-defined portfolio procedures, they consistently apply their portfolio method to all projects, and management buys into the approach. The relative popularity of various portfolio methods—from financial methods to strategic approaches, bubble diagrams, and scoring approaches—are investigated. Not surprisingly, financial approaches are the most popular and dominate the portfolio decision. But what is surprising is the dubious results achieved via financial approaches. Again, benchmark businesses stand out from the rest: they place less emphasis on financial approaches and more on strategic methods, and they tend to use multiple methods more so than the rest. Strategic methods, along with scoring approaches, yield the best portfolios; financial methods yield poorer portfolio results. The authors provide a number of recommendations and suggestions for anyone setting out to implement portfolio management in their business.     

The Formation of Tie Strength in a Strategic Alliance's First New Product Development Project: The Influence of Project and Partners' Characteristics

This paper draws on theories of interorganizational learning, social networks, and transaction cost economics to investigate the formation of tie strength between first‐time alliance partners. It focuses on a strategic alliance's first new product development (NPD) project, which is characterized by a lack of prior experience and insufficient trust between partners and explores how the interaction between (1) interorganizational learning (the “degree” [amount of knowledge shared] and “type” [tacit or explicit nature of the knowledge]); (2) the required communication (“frequency level” and “degree of media‐richness”) to transfer and exchange knowledge; and (3) economic transaction considerations (reducing cost and avoiding opportunism), in highly uncertain and dynamic environments, and, in the absence of an assumption of trust, will determine the future strength of the ties between partners. We argue that the “degree” and “type” of interorganizational learning that are required to efficiently develop an alliance's first NPD project determine the strength of the ties between the partners. Each “degree and type” of learning has a different impact on the frequency and media richness of the partners' communication, and consequently each leads to a different level of social tie strength between the partners. This relationship is moderated by the partners' market overlap. We suggest that the required “degree and type” of interorganizational learning is contingent on the project characteristics (degree of innovation; “radical versus incremental,” and the mode of development; “modular versus integrated”). This relationship, however, is moderated by the partners' technical skills (complementary versus similar).     

工程管理信息系统在国际工程管理中的应用

章通过对国际工程管理咨询公司工作特点的分析,结合工程管理信息系统在工程管理中的应用情况,阐述了在工程管理咨询中应用工程管理信息系统进行信息处理的意义,同时,对工程管理信息系统的概念、基本功能、发展趋势和应用模式进行了探讨。     

加强工程项目总承包管理的对策思考

目前，工程项目总承包管理方面存在着组织结构不合理、对总承包管理模式研究不深不透、管理体制未彻底理顺，以及业主行为不规范等问题。必须从调控总承包规模，理顺总承包管理机制，建立健全法律法规，以及规范业主行为等方面入手，加强工程项目总承包管理，更好地同国际接轨，提高总承包管理水平和竞争能力。     

加强无功电压管理 降低电网线路损耗

从石河子电网(文中简称石网)无功电压的运行现状及线损率的变化规律出发,分析了无功电压对电网经济运行的影响,并从技术、经济、管理三方面提出如何加强无功电压管理、降低电网线路损耗的建议.     

New Product Portfolio Management Decisions: Antecedents and Consequences

This research employs organizational information processing theory to propose and examine the antecedents and consequences of new product portfolio management (NPPM) decisions. Understanding NPPM decisions is an important research area because these decisions affect firm profitability but are difficult to make because of limited reliable information. Recent survey results of Product Development and Management Association members and other NPPM professionals suggest nearly half of initial new product ideas are chosen to advance through the new product development (NPD) pipeline via informal processes. Thus, managers wield considerable influence in NPPM. Yet only limited research quantitatively examines how NPPM decisions impact performance and the role of manager dispositions. Using as the research context a marketing simulation exercise conducted with mid‐level managers, this research reveals important insights into the impact of the three NPPM dimensions—value maximization, balance, and strategic fit—on NPD and firm performance. The analysis suggests a critical role for the NPPM dimension of balance as it is the single dimension impacting performance. However, value maximization is relevant as a criterion for competing because, overall, managers see this dimension as important. At the same time, managers are cautioned in their use of strategic fit as it appears this dimension may constrain innovative choices. Furthermore, three manager dispositions proposed from organizational information processing theory—directive leadership style, need for cognition, and risk perceptions—all influence NPPM dimensions. Managers are recommended to consider the personality traits of managers involved in NPPM decisions to ensure thorough consideration of all dimensions.     

New Product Development: Impact of Project Characteristics and Development Practices on Performance

Concurrent product development process and integrated product development teams have emerged as the two dominant new product development (NPD) “best practices” in the literature. Yet empirical evidence of their impact on product development success remains inconclusive. This paper draws upon organizational information processing theory (OIPT) to explore how these two dominant NPD best practices and two key aspects of NPD project characteristics (i.e., project uncertainty and project complexity) directly and jointly affect the NPD performance. Contrary to the “best practice” literature, the analysis, based on 266 NPD projects from three industries (i.e., automotive, electronics, and machinery) across nine countries (i.e., Austria, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Spain, Sweden, and the United States), found no evidence of any direct impact of process concurrency or team integration on overall NPD performance. Instead, there is evidence of negative impact of the interaction between project uncertainty and concurrent NPD process and positive impact of the interaction between project complexity and team integration on overall NPD performance. Moreover, the study found no evidence of any direct negative impact of project uncertainty or complexity on overall NPD performance as suggested in the literature, but found evidence of a direct positive relationship between project complexity and overall NPD performance. The practical implications of these results are significant. First, neither process concurrency nor team integration should be embraced universally as best practice. Second, process concurrency should be avoided in projects with high uncertainty (i.e., when working with unfamiliar product, market, or technology). Finally, team integration should be encouraged for complex product development projects. For a simple product a loosely integrated team or a more centralized decision process may work well. However, as project complexity increases, team integration becomes essential for improved product development. There is no one‐size‐fits‐all solution for managing NPD projects. The choice of a product development practice should be determined by the project characteristics.     

Balancing Development Costs and Sales to Optimize the Development Time of Product Line Additions*

Development teams often use mental models to simplify development time decision making because a comprehensive empirical assessment of the trade‐offs across the metrics of development time, development costs, proficiency in market‐entry timing, and new product sales is simply not feasible. Surprisingly, these mental models have not been studied in prior research on the trade‐offs among the aforementioned metrics. These mental models are important to consider, however, because they define reality, specify what team members attend to, and guide their decision making. As such, these models influence how development teams make trade‐offs across the four metrics to try to optimize new product profitability. Teams with such an objective should manage to a development time that minimizes development costs and to a proficient market‐entry timing that maximizes new product sales. Yet many teams use mental models for development time decision making that focus either just on development costs or on proficiency in market‐entry timing. This survey‐based study uses data from 115 completed NPD projects, all product line additions from manufacturers in The Netherlands, to demonstrate that there is a cost to simplifying decision making. Making development time decisions without taking into account the contingency between development time and proficiency in market‐entry timing can be misleading, and using either a sales‐maximization or a cost‐minimization simplified decision‐making model may result in a cost penalty or a sales loss. The results from this study show that the development time that maximizes new product profitability is longer than the time that maximizes new product sales and is shorter than the development time that minimizes development costs. Furthermore, the results reveal that the cost penalty of sales maximization is smaller than the sales loss of development costs minimization. An important implication of the results is that, to determine the optimal development time, teams need to distinguish between cost and sales effects of development time reductions. To determine the relative impact of these effects this study also estimates the elasticities of development costs, new product sales, and new product profitability with regard to development time. Armed with this knowledge, development teams should be better equipped to make trade‐offs among the four metrics of development time, development costs, proficiency in market‐entry timing, and new product sales.     

在工程项目管理中造就项目管理人才

作为一个大型建筑施工企业,如果没有持续的较大型综合项目作为支撑,企业就无法得到发展,各种企业资源也将随之削弱,但如果没有一支过硬的人才队伍,各个工程项目也很难顺利完成。上海绿地建设(集团)有限公司从工程项目招投标起就制定在工程项目中造就各类项目管理人才的目标,树立"以人为本"的全新观念。通过宝钢集团特殊钢指挥中心项目,公司培养和造就了一批专业人才,既高质量完成工程项目,又培养了相关人才,促进了企业的可持续发展。