Links between Internal and External Cooperation in Product Development: An Exploratory Study*

While there is an overwhelming amount of publications on cooperation in product development projects, they mainly focus on cooperation between business functions within an organization (internal cooperation) or on cooperation between organizations (external cooperation). Yet the relationship between internal and external cooperation has received only scarce attention. This article studies how internal and external cooperation relate. Following an extensive literature study and 12 exploratory interviews with managers in eight organizations, a case‐research design was set up. More specifically, six product development projects were studied in depth, combining data from interviews, questionnaires, and information from secondary sources. Based on these cases, the authors present four different links between internal and external cooperation: (1) Internal cooperation may serve as a mechanism to coordinate external cooperation; (2) Internal cooperative norms are similar to external cooperative norms; (3) External cooperation may stimulate internal cooperation; and (4) Internal cooperation may be an essential part of organizational learning from external partners. The results of this exploratory study prove the interaction between internal and external cooperation to be a subject worthy of investigation and demonstrate that in order to appreciate fully the quality of a firm's external cooperation efforts, they should be studied in combination with the firm's internal interfaces. The authors also show the managerial implications of these links, as well as some directions for further research.     

集群风险自组织理论建构的探索式案例研究

集群风险已经成为一种普遍的经济现象,受到理论界的广泛关注,集群风险自组织则是其核心内涵的反映。根据协同学理论的分析框架及探索式多案例的研究设计,本文通过对三个企业集群样本的逐一研究剖析发现:集群风险自组织是一个内在结构演化的过程,由焦点企业、网络能力、网络结构三者相互作用而阶段性表征;在层次性、非线性和协同性三者协同演化下,风险阶段性地打破了集群平衡态,从而形成集群风险自组织间断非平衡性的特征。论文建构了集群风险自组织理论机制,对集群风险治理的实践具有一定启示意义。     

The Interplay of Customer and Product Innovation Dynamics: An Exploratory Study

The challenges of successfully developing radical or really new products have received considerable attention from a variety of marketing, strategic, and organizational perspectives. Previous research has stressed the importance of a market‐driven customer orientation, the resolution of market and technological uncertainty, and organizational processes such as cross‐functional teams and organizational learning. However, several fundamental issues have not been addressed. From a customer's perspective, a more innovative product tends to have uncertain benefits and requires customers to learn new behaviors. Customer preferences can, therefore, change as product experience and learning increase. From a firm's perspective, it is unclear how to be customer‐oriented under such dynamic preferences, and product strategies using evolving technologies will tend to interact with how customers learn about an innovation. This research focuses on identifying unresolved issues about these customer and product innovation dynamics. A conceptual framework and series of propositions are presented that relate both changing technology and customer learning to a firm's strategic decisions in developing and launching really new products. The framework is based on in‐depth interviews with high‐tech product managers across several sectors, focusing on the business‐to‐business context. The propositions resulting from the framework highlight the need to consider relevant customer dynamics as integral to a firm's product innovation process. Successful innovation strategies and future research challenges are discussed, and applications to better understanding customer needs and theories of disruptive innovation are examined. Several key insights for innovation success hinge on a broad, downstream orientation to customer needs and product innovation dynamics. To be effective innovators, firms must know their customers' customers and competitors as well as or better than their immediate customers do. Market research must extend downstream for a comprehensive understanding of customer needs dynamics. In the context of disruptive innovation, new dimensions of customer needs may become more valuable based on perceived downstream customer trends. Firms may also innovate on secondary needs because mainstream customers do not always give firms the design freedom to radically innovate on primary features. Understanding customer commitments and how they develop under evolving needs can help firms focus resources on innovative efforts more likely to be accepted by customers.     

航天科技工业改革发展中的几个关系问题

目前,我国航天科技工业正处于改革发展的关键时期,亦是战略机遇期,面临着新的形势,必然有新的问题、新的矛盾。未来改革与发展的核心是贯彻落实科学发展观,切实做到以人为本,实现全面、协调、可持续发展。笔者认为,处理好若干关系对贯彻落实科学发展观是至关重要的。     

Achieving Customer Satisfaction through Integrated Products and Services: An Exploratory Study

Complex products such as manufacturing equipment have always needed maintenance and repair services. Increasingly, leading manufacturers are integrating products and services to generate increased revenues and achieve customer satisfaction. Designing integrated products and services requires a different approach to new product development and a clear understanding of how customers perceive the value they obtain from actual usage of products and services—so‐called value‐in‐use. However, there is a lack of research on integrated products and services and how they impact customer satisfaction. An exploratory study was undertaken to understand customers' views on integrated products and services and the value‐in‐use derived from such offerings. As value‐in‐use and its impacts are complicated concepts, a technique from psychology—Repertory Grid Technique—was used to gather data in 33 interviews. The interviews allowed a deep understanding of customer views on integrated products and services to be obtained, and a systematic analysis identified the key attributes of value‐in‐use. In order to probe further, the data were then analyzed using Honey's procedure, which identified the impact of the attributes of value‐in‐use on customer satisfaction. Two key attributes—relational dynamic and access—were found to have the most influence on customer satisfaction. This paper contributes to the innovation field by identifying customer needs for integrated products and services and how these impact customer satisfaction. These are key points and need to be fully considered by managers during new product and service development. Similarly, the paper identifies a number of important areas for further research.     

Sectoral Heterogeneity in New Service Development: An Exploratory Study of Service Types and Success Factors

The service industry is of fundamental relevance for the economies of industrialized countries, as the service industry produces the highest growth in the gross domestic product. In this regard, new service development (NSD) represents a critical resource for competitive survival and a decisive factor of growth in the service industry. However, service firms across many industries are increasingly faced with the challenge of determining how best to manage their development of new service offerings. Although researchers have shown growing interest in NSD issues, this area is still underutilized. Furthermore, although the heterogeneity of the service industry has been emphasized for years, the current body of research on NSD mainly focuses on specific service environments, providing data that are often not comparable across different service sectors. Additionally, there is no study to date that comprehensively examines innovation activities and the relevance of service innovations’ success factors within different service industries. The aim of this exploratory study is to establish a more balanced picture of the nature of innovation activities in terms of NSD characteristics and success factors in the heterogeneous service industry. From this perspective, this paper begins with an examination of the factors that contribute to the success of NSD. Based on a meta‐analysis of new service success factor studies, 17 different success determinants are classified and aggregated to service‐related success determinants. Subsequently, a cluster analysis of 1016 service companies is used to identify different service innovation types. For the service sector, four service innovation types are determined: efficient developers, innovative developers, interactive adopters, and standardized adopters. Furthermore, based on interviews with service innovation managers, the previously identified success factors are examined for each innovation type using a standardized survey. Finally, based on the results of this exploratory study, the paper concludes with recommendations for NSD management and research propositions for each service innovation type. These propositions support innovation managers to successfully manage service innovations for the innovation type they are operating in.     

State Ownership, Privatization and Performance in Singapore: An Exploratory Study from a Strategic Management Perspective

This paper considers the ownership debate with regard to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) performance, that is, whether superior performance of SOEs can be achieved under state ownership. While the traditional belief has been, supported by empirical work, that private ownership is generally associated with superior performance, the experience of Singapore is a clear example to the contrary. We outline global privatization trends and discuss the impact of privatization programs. We then discuss Singapore Telecom as a case where state ownership combined with several contextual and firm-related factors, especially firm strategy, has led to sustained world-class performance. We develop a theoretical framework for this analysis based on the strategic management field. We lastly outline some theoretical and practical implications of the analysis.     

An Exploratory Study of Company Turnaround in Australia and Singapore Following the Asia Crisis

There has been little research into company turnaround practices in Asia. This paper investigates the role of retrenchment, replacement of chairman or chief executive and ownership change in the turnaround process, using a sample of 60 listed companies in Australia and Singapore. Conclusions are drawn that overall, transparency of the regulatory environment and other governance issues are a stronger influence on turnaround practices than are cultural issues. This may make Singapore, which has transparency and governance risk indicators at similar low levels to Australia, a unique business environment in Asia.     

充满生机与活力的中国钢铁工业

中国普通百姓对钢铁有着特殊的感情,钢产量达到1000万t曾是中国人上世纪50年代的梦想。中华人民共和国成立初期,钢产量只有15.8万t,1996年突破1亿t,2003年突破2亿t,2005年突破3亿t,2006年突破4亿t,连续11年居世界第一位。     

Managing Alliance Intricacies: An Exploratory Study of U.S. and Indian Alliance Partners

This was a study of 22 U.S. and 26 Indian organizations operating as alliance partners in India. With data from 109 U.S. and 114 Indian managers, we explored the pre-alliance imperatives by generating a set of transaction-specific variables and a sequential order integrating the content and process issues. The variables were found to have different predictive strengths in the two countries and the ideal sequential order was different from the actual order followed. The report highlights the implications of the study for international management.     

Internationalization, Local Adaptation, and Subsidiary's Entrepreneurship: An Exploratory Study on Taiwanese Manufacturing Firms in Indonesia and Malaysia

This inductive research attempts to explore the dynamics of firm internationalization process, with a focus on a manufacturing firm's first-time foreign entry endeavor. By conducting comparative analyses based on six cases of Taiwanese manufacturing firms who have established production bases in Indonesia and Malaysia, we postulate a conceptual framework entailing relationships among entry decision, implementation strategy, and local adaptation. We highlight the role of subsidiary's entrepreneurial initiatives play in achieving required extent of local adaptation and hence successful implementation for companies lacking sufficient experiential knowledge of internationalization. Propositions based on the conceptualization are detailed and the implications of these qualitative insights are discussed, with an expectation of contributing to the extant theories of internationalization.     

The Impact of User‐Oriented Design on New Product Development: An Examination of Fundamental Relationships*

Design offers a potent way to position and to differentiate products and can play a significant role in their success. In many ways it is the focus on deep understanding of the customer or user—what may be termed user‐oriented design (UOD)—that transforms a bundle of technology with the ability to provide functionality into a “product” that people desire to interact with and from which they derive benefits. Even though the importance of this type of design is gaining recognition, several fundamental relationships between user‐oriented design contributions and the new product development (NPD) process and outcomes (i.e., product) remain unresearched, although they are assumed. This article examines the fundamental relationships underlying the incorporation of a user orientation into the NPD process. The discussion is organized around UOD's impact in terms of enhancing collaborative new product development (process oriented), improving idea generation (process oriented), producing superior product or service solutions (product oriented), and facilitating product appropriateness and adoption (product oriented). Each of these is developed and presented in the form of a research proposition relating to the impact of user‐oriented design on product development. The fundamental relationships articulated concerning UOD's impact on NPD form a conceptual framework for this approach to product design and development. For practitioners, the article suggests how user‐oriented design can improve NPD through its more grounded and comprehensive approach, along with the elevated appreciation of design challenges and heightened sense of possibilities for a product being developed. For scholars, the article identifies four important areas for UOD research. In addition to the rich avenues offered for research by each of these, the framework presented provides a foundation for further study as well as the development of new measures and tools for enhancing NPD efforts.     

Strategies and Performance in the Thrift Industry: 1979–1987

From the late seventies until 1989, the regulatory environment of the thrift industry was changed from one that permitted little managerial discretion to one in which managers were allowed to choose from a wide variety of lending and borrowing activities. In this article, cluster analysis is used to separate thrifts into strategic groups based on the extent to which they utilized their new powers. Differences among the groups and the relationship between group membership and performance is tested over the period 1979–1987 using analysis of variance.     

我国第三产业发展与就业增长互动关系研究

通过构建VAR模型对我国第三产业发展与就业增长的关系进行了实证研究。协整分析表明第三产业与就业增长之间存在着长期协同互动关系。VAR模型及脉冲响应函数的动态分析表明我国第三产业发展表现为相互促进的累积过程;劳动力投入是影响第三产业发展的重要因素,就业人数的增长对第三产业发展有巨大的推动作用;第三产业具有很大的就业吸纳空间。最后根据就业吸纳弹性来阐明第三产业发展对劳动力的吸纳能力并提出相应的政策建议。     

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.     

中国股市周期与经济周期的动态关联研究

本文运用动态条件相关估计方法(DCC)来考察中国股市周期与真实经济周期以及金融经济周期的动态关系。研究发现,在样本期间内(1996年1月~2010年12月),股市周期与金融经济周期以及真实经济周期的动态相关关系基本上为正相关关系,可见我国股票市场的周期波动很大程度上受到真实经济周期波动与金融经济周期波动的共同影响。与真实经济周期相比较而言,金融经济周期与股市周期的动态关联程度更高,而且在不同的牛熊市阶段,股市周期与真实经济周期以及金融经济周期的动态关联也各不相同,体现了不同牛熊市阶段的运行特征。总体来看,股市周期与真实经济周期以及金融经济周期之间的动态关联在不断加强。虽然股市周期与真实经济周期以及金融经济周期的运行并不会完全同步,但是反映真实经济周期指标与金融经济周期指标的重要高低点是判断股市周期运行顶底的一个重要参考依据。     

模块化技术创新网络结点问耦合关系研究

将技术创新网络中的结点企业看做模块化组织,研究它们之间的关系具有现实意义.网络化合作创新的特点要求结点间采用松散的耦合关系.结合价值网络的分析方法,将模块化组织之间耦合的要素分为依赖要素、联系要素和激励要素,建立了技术创新网络结点组织间的三要素(DCS)耦合模型,应用DCS耦合模型研究了核心模块协调型和分散型网络结点组织间的耦合关系,从理论上界定了控制耦合、信息耦合和关系耦合三种耦合方式,为创新网络的有效运作提供了参考.     

模块化技术创新网络结点间耦合关系研究

将技术创新网络中的结点企业看做模块化组织，研究它们之间的关系具有现实意义。网络化合作创新的特点要求结点间采用松散的耦合关系。结合价值网络的分析方法，将模块化组织之间耦合的要素分为依赖要素、联系要素和激励要素，建立了技术创新网络结点组织间的三要素（DCS）耦合模型．应用DCS耦合模型研究了核心模块协调型和分散型网络结点组织间的耦合关系，从理论上界定了控制耦合、信息耦合和关系耦合三种耦合方式．为创新网络的有效运作提供了参考。     

Organizing for Radical Innovation: An Exploratory Study of the Structural Aspects of RI Management Systems in Large Established Firms

To escape the intense competition of today's global economy, large established organizations seek growth options beyond conventional new product development that leads to incremental changes in current product lines. Radical innovation (RI) is one such pathway, which results in organically driven growth through the creation of whole new lines of business that bring new to the world performance features to the market and may result in the creation of entirely new markets. Yet success is elusive, as many have experienced and scholars have documented. This article reports results of a three-year, longitudinal study of 12 large established firms that have declared a strategic intent to evolve their RI capabilities. In contrast to other academic research that has analyzed specific projects to understand management practices appropriate for RI, the present research reported explores the evolution of management systems for enabling radical innovation to occur repeatedly in large firms and reports on one aspect of this management system: organizational structures for enabling and nurturing RI. To consider organizational structure as a venue for capability development is new in the management of innovation and dynamic capabilities literatures. Conventional wisdom holds that RIs should be incubated outside the company and assimilated once they have gained traction in the marketplace. Numerous experiments with organizational structures were observed that instead work to manage the interfaces between the RI management system and the mother organization. These structures are described here, and insights are drawn out regarding radical innovation competency requirements, transition challenges, senior leadership mandates, and business-unit ambidexterity. The centerpiece of this research is the explication of the Discovery–Incubation–Acceleration framework, which details three sets of necessary, though not sufficient competencies, for building an RI capability.     

Launch Decisions and the Early Market Survival of Innovations: An Empirical Analysis of the Italian Mobile Value‐Added Services (VAS) Industry

There is a surprisingly high number of new products and services that fail to produce enough return on the firm's investments in development and launch activities. Literature has shown that these failures can be due to a poorly planned and executed launch. Although a vast stream of research has studied how strategic and tactical launch decisions affect the performance of new products and services, some issues still need theoretical and empirical investigation. This paper aims to extend new product launch research in two ways. First, it studies how tactical launch decisions (i.e., investments in advertising and involvement of external organizations in the launch process) interact with an important strategic choice (i.e., the degree of radicalness of the new product or service) to affect new product performance. Second, it focuses on a particular dimension of performance, that is, early market survival, which has been overlooked in launch strategy and tactics research so far. Using a data set comprising more than 9300 new mobile value‐added services launched in Italy between 2003 and 2006, the paper finds that launch tactics interact with the radicalness of the innovation to affect early market survival. In particular, communicating the distinctive characteristics of the new product or service and partnering with external organizations during the launch process are tactics that work particularly well with radical innovations. This is possibly due to the fact that they help reduce customers’ uncertainty regarding expected benefits and transaction costs, and hence contribute to win their resistance to adopt the innovation soon after launch. Investments in corporate advertising lead instead to a tangible improvement of the probability of early market survival for both radical and incremental innovations. In other words, the positive impact on the probability of early survival of increasing investments in corporate advertising appears to be relevant for both radically and incrementally new services. One possible explanation is that this tactic helps increase the number of potential customers who come to know about the existence of the innovating firms and its offering soon after launch, but this is likely to be equally important to stimulate early diffusion of both incremental and radical innovations.