Do Social Media Tools Impact the Development Phase? An Exploratory Study

Over the past two decades, firms have increasingly adopted information technology (IT) tools and services to improve the new product development (NPD) process. Recently, social media tools and/or tools that include social networking features are being utilized to allow users both inside and outside the organization to easily communicate and collaboratively design, manage, and launch new products and services. Unfortunately, there is little empirical evidence to suggest what influence these new IT tools have on NPD performance. Through a project‐level, exploratory, empirical study, the impact of these new IT tools on the development phase of the NPD process is investigated. We find that the use of these new tools is significantly lower than the adoption of traditional IT tools such as e‐mail and computer‐aided‐design. Traditional tools have a significant, positive impact on NPD outcomes, including team collaboration, the concepts/prototypes generated, and management evaluation. Interestingly, new media tools such as project wikis and shared collaboration spaces also have a significant, positive impact on concepts/prototypes generated, and management evaluation. Surprisingly, social networking tools like weblogs and Twitter negatively impact management evaluation while having no impact on NPD team collaboration and concepts/prototypes generated. These results suggest that social networking tools in their current guise are not helpful to the NPD team and may in fact be distracting to innovation management during the development phase.     

First among Equals: The Effect of Team Leader Characteristics on the Internal Dynamics of Cross‐Functional Product Development Teams*

Drawing on the path‐goal theory of leadership, the present study examines the effect of team leader characteristics on an array of conflict resolution behavior, collaboration, and communication patterns of cross‐functional new product development (NPD) teams. A hierarchical linear model analysis based on a survey of 246 members from 64 NPD teams suggests that participative management style and initiation of goal structure by the team leader exert the strongest influence on internal team dynamics. Both these leadership characteristics had a positive effect on functional conflict resolution, collaboration, and communication quality within the NPD team while discouraging dysfunctional conflict resolution and formal communications. Comparatively, team leader's consideration, initiation of process structure, and position had a surprisingly weak effect on internal team dynamics. Further, the findings underscore the differential effects on various dimensions of team dynamics, the importance of controlling for project and team characteristics, and the use of multilevel modeling for studying nested phenomena related to NPD teams. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Can You Hear Me Now? Communication in Virtual Product Development Teams*

Globalization and technological advances are driving organizations to extend the boundaries of new product development (NPD) teams from traditional colocated settings to dispersed or virtual settings. Virtual NPD teams have a wide array of information and communication technologies (ICTs) at their disposal. ICTs allow team members to communicate and collaborate as they cope with the opportunities and challenges of cross‐boundary work. The purpose of this paper is to explore ICT use by members of virtual NPD teams. This study presents an exploratory test and integration of two competing perspectives of media use in virtual teams: media capacity theories and social dynamic media theories. Specifically, this paper examines the role of task type, organizational context, and ICT type as critical contingency variables affecting ICT use. It also examines how different patterns of ICT use relate to individual perceptions of team performance. The findings from this study of 184 members of virtual NPD teams in three global firms suggest that communication via ICTs in virtual NPD teams is contingent on a range of factors.     

The Impact of Team Cognitive Styles on Performance of Radical and Incremental NPD Projects

Although prior studies increased our understanding of the performance implications of new product development (NPD) team members' functional backgrounds and demographic variables, they remained relatively silent on the impact of underlying psychological characteristics such as the team members' cognitive styles on project performance. The goal of this study is to explore the effects of NPD teams' cognitive styles on project performance in different kinds of NPD projects. Based on survey data from members of 95 NPD teams gathered in four Dutch manufacturing companies, hypotheses about the relationships between teams' cognitive styles and project performance of radical and incremental NPD projects are tested. Results of linear regression analyses show that the level of teams' analytical information processing positively affects project performance in both incremental and radical NPD projects, whereas the relationship between the level of teams' intuitive information processing and project performance depends on the radicalness of the project. These findings contribute to the academic discussion on team innovation, suggesting that, next to demographic and functional characteristics, cognitive styles in teams also significantly influence project performance.     

Antecedents and consequences of team sensemaking capability in product development projects

With the increasing popularity of organizational sensemaking in the literature, sensemaking capability of firms attracts many researchers and practitioners from different fields. Nevertheless, sensemaking capability is rarely addressed in the new product development (NPD) project teams in the technology and innovation management literature. Specifically, we know little about what team sensemaking capability is, its ingredients and benefits, and how it works in NPD projects (e.g., its antecedents and consequences). By investigating 92 NPD project teams, we found that (1) team sensemaking capability, which is composed of internal and external communication, information gathering, information classification, building shared mental models, and taking experimental actions, has a positive impact on the information implementation and speed‐to‐market; (2) information implementation and speed‐to‐market mediate the relationship between team sensemaking capability and new product success; and (3) team sensemaking capability mediates the relationship between team processes and information implementation and partially mediates the relationship between team processes and speed‐to‐market. We also found that team autonomy, interpersonal trust among team members, and open‐mindedness of team members positively influence the development of team sensemaking capability. Theoretical and managerial implications of the study findings are discussed.     

Who Knows What in NPD Teams: Communication Context,Mode, and Task Contingencies

The use of cross‐functional teams in new product development (NPD) benefits firms in many ways. One benefit is the diverse knowledge team members bring to the project, but that benefit can only be appreciated if team members fully utilize and integrate the differentiated expertise of members. As reliance on cross‐functional NPD teams grows, however, firms struggle to exploit the full potential of functionally diverse groups, the biggest obstacle being integrating team members' varied knowledge, expertise, and abilities. Therefore, understanding how information is integrated and used is a primary concern for both practitioners and researchers. Databases and other forms of hard data are methods team members can use to effectively share and integrate knowledge; another method based on social cognition is transactive memory systems (TMS). TMS indicates who will learn what and from whom. The notion is that knowledge is distributed among people in the group, and to make effective use of it, individuals need to know who knows what and who knows who knows what. Grounded in the knowledge‐based theory of the firm, this study investigates the influence of different communication contexts and modes on TMS under different NPD task environments (i.e., exploitation and exploration) in cross‐functional NPD teams. A theoretical model is developed and empirically tested using data collected from 272 ongoing NPD teams of 128 Chinese high‐tech companies. Findings suggest that when teams face tasks defined by exploration, informal communication and face‐to‐face communication are positively associated with TMS, whereas for tasks defined by exploitation, formal communication and computer‐mediated communication are positively related with TMS. Additionally, this study found that TMS is positively related to NPD performance both in terms of project performance and in terms of market performance. Based on these findings, theoretical and managerial implications are drawn regarding resource deployment that encourages the development of effective TMS leading to successful NPD projects.     

Procedural Justice Climate in New Product Development Teams: Antecedents and Consequences

With the increasing interest in the concept of justice in the group behavior literature, the procedural justice (PJ) climate attracts many researchers and practitioners from different fields. Nevertheless, the PJ climate is rarely addressed in the new product development (NPD) project team literature. Specifically, the technology and innovation management (TIM) literature provides little about what the PJ climate is, its nature and benefits, and how it works in NPD project teams. Also, few studies investigate the antecedents and consequences of the PJ climate in NPD teams enhancing the understanding of this concept from a practical perspective. This paper discusses the PJ climate theory in a NPD team context and empirically demonstrates how team members' positive collective perceptions of a PJ climate can be developed and how a PJ climate influences a project's performance in NPD teams. In particular, team culture values including employee orientation, customer orientation, systematic management control, innovativeness, and social responsibility were investigated as antecedents, and team learning, speed to market, and market success of new products were studied as outcomes of PJ climate in this paper. By studying 83 NPD project teams it was found on the basis of using partial least squares (PLS) method that (1) the level of employee, customer and innovativeness orientation as well as systematic management control during the project had a positive impact on developing a PJ climate in an NPD team; (2) a PJ climate positively affects team learning and product development time (i.e., speed to market); and (3) team learning and speed to market mediate the relations between the PJ climate and new product success (NPS). Based on the findings, this paper suggests that managers should enhance the PJ climate and team culture in the project team to enhance team learning and to develop products faster. In particular, managers should (1) open a discussion forum among people and create a dialogue for people who disagree with the other project team members rather than dictating or emposing others ideas to them, (2) facilitate information searching and collecting mechanisms to make decisions effectively and to clarify uncertainties, and (3) allow team members to challange project‐related ideas and decisions and modify them with consensus. Also, to enhance the PJ climate during the project, managers should (1) respect and listen to all team members' ideas and try to understand why they are sometimes in opposition, (2) define team members' task boundaries and clarify project norms and project goals, and (3) set knowledge‐questioning values by facilitating team members to try out new ideas and seek out new ways to do things.     

Team member experiences in new product development: views from the trenches

Although cross-functional teams are often used for new product development (NPD), many companies struggle to implement them successfully. Through in-depth interviews with 71 team members from 18 companies in a variety of technology-based industries, this study focuses on the experiences of the people who actually do much of the work of NPD (team members) and explores their perceptions and attitudes about cross-functional team assignments. The purpose of our study is to identify the factors that influence and shape NPD team member experiences. Our results suggest that although NPD work can be rewarding and productive, NPD team members are often neglected by other team members, project leaders, and senior management. This sense of neglect has important implications for all of these constituencies, but particularly for senior management.     

Antecedents and Consequences of Unlearning in New Product Development Teams

Unlearning, which first appeared almost 30 years ago as a subprocess of the organizational learning process, has received only limited attention in the literature. Rather than building on empirical research, the existing scholarship is largely anecdotal, aimed at reviewing the literature and generating new insights. Further, unlearning studies tend to analyze the organizational level and neglect smaller units such as work groups and teams. To address this gap in the understanding of unlearning, this article empirically investigates unlearning in work groups in general and new product development (NPD) teams in particular. This study, based on the literature of organizational memory and change, operationalized team unlearning as changes in beliefs and routines during team‐based projects and then discussed the importance of unlearning behavior in NPD teams. Specifically it was argued that unlearning guards beliefs and routines against rigidity to cope with environmental turbulence. This is of particular note when rigid product development procedures and group beliefs inhibit the reception and evaluation of new market and technology information and reduce the value of perceived new information. To test the antecedents and consequences of the team unlearning model, 319 NPD teams were investigated. Using structural equation modeling, it was found that (1) team crisis and anxiety have a direct impact on team unlearning; (2) environmental turbulence also has a direct impact on both team crisis and anxiety and team unlearning; and (3) after team beliefs and project routines have changed, implementing new knowledge or information positively affects new product success. Specifically, the findings revealed that changes in team members' collective beliefs in accordance with environmental changes and the in‐process planning or adjustment of project work activities and procedures as the projects evolve enable teams to develop and launch new products successfully. Also, results indicated that team crisis and anxiety in NPD projects assist team members in revising their previous beliefs and routines when project teams are performing in turbulent environments. This article suggests that managers can enhance team unlearning by (1) creating a sense of urgency by introducing an artificial crisis; and (2) avoiding the groupthink phenomena by bringing in an outsider to challenge existing policies and procedures, and training the team on lateral thinking. In addition, managers can plan project activities in a flexible manner that allows changes as the project evolves to facilitate team unlearning. However, managers should also be cautious when promoting team unlearning. Without careful and considerable evaluation, change in beliefs and routines can cause information/knowledge loss.     

Managing the Unexpected Across Space: Improvisation,Dispersion, and Performance in NPD Teams

Organizations are increasingly moving toward a team‐based structure for managing complex knowledge in new product development (NPD) projects. Such teams operate in an environment characterized by dynamic project requirements and emergent nonroutine issues, which can undermine their ability to achieve project objectives. Team improvisation—a collective, spontaneous, and creative action for identifying novel solutions to emergent problems—has been identified as a key team‐situated response to unexpected challenges to NPD team effectiveness. Geographic dispersion is increasingly becoming a reality for NPD teams that find themselves needing to improvise solutions to emergent challenges while attempting to leverage the knowledge of team members who are physically distributed across various locations. However, very little is known about how teams' improvisational actions affect performance when such actions are executed in increasingly dispersed teams. To address this gap in the literature, this paper draws on the emerging literature on different forms and degrees of team dispersion to understand how team improvisation affects team performance in such teams. In particular this paper takes into account both the structural and psychological facets of dispersion by considering the physical distance between team members, the configuration of the team across different sites, as well as the team members' perception of being distant from their teammates. Responses from 299 team leaders and team members of 71 NPD projects in the software industry were used to analyze the relationship between team improvisation and team performance, as well as the moderating effect of the three different conceptualizations of team dispersion. Results of the study indicate that team improvisation has a positive influence on project team performance by allowing team members to respond to unexpected challenges through creative and timely action. However, increasing degrees of team member dispersion (both structural and psychological) attenuate this relationship by making it difficult to have timely access to other team members' knowledge and by limiting real‐time interactions that may lead to the development of creative solutions. The results of this research offer guidance to managers about when to balance the desire to leverage expertise to cope with unexpected events. Moreover, the present paper provides directions for future research on improvisation and team dispersion. Future research is encouraged to investigate factors that may help highly dispersed teams to overcome the shortcomings of team dispersion in dealing with emergent events.     

An investigation of the use of global, virtual, and colocated new product development teams

This paper presents the results of an investigation of differences between global, virtual and colocated new product development (NPD) teams. Specifically, we examined whether and how these three types of teams differed in terms of usage, challenges, and performance. A survey of PDMA members was undertaken to collect the data. Out of 103 firms participating in the survey, 54 had used or were using global teams for some of their NPD efforts. Overall, we found that the use of global teams in our respondent firms is rapidly increasing. Our respondents indicated that by the year 2001, approximately one out of every five NPD teams in their companies are likely to be global. However, our respondents also expect that their companies will be using multiple types of teams that is, global, virtual, and colocated, to develop their new products. Our findings also suggest that global teams generally face greater behavioral and project management challenges than either colocated or virtual teams. Global team performance is also lower than the performance of virtual or colocated teams. Are these challenges associated with poorer performance? In examining this question, our results suggest that greater project management challenges are associated with lower performance, for all three types of teams. Surprisingly, behavioral challenges were not associated with performance for any team type. Our results suggest that firms face different problems associated with managing each type of NPD team—global, virtual and colocated. To effectively manage each type of team may, in turn, require that companies and their managers employ different solutions to these different problems. Additionally, companies may find that the preparation they provide to their managers and team members to work in these different team environments may also need to be different. Further research is clearly needed to address these managerial implications.     

Antecedents of Team Intuition and Its Impact on the Success of New Product Development Projects

Research on new product development (NPD) team decision making has identified a number of cognitive mechanisms (e.g., team intelligence, teamwork quality, and charged behavior) that appear to guide NPD teams toward effective decisions. Despite an extensive body of literature on these aspects of NPD team decisions, team intuition has yet to be investigated in the context of NPD teams. Intuition is regarded as a form of information processing that differs from cognitive processes, and is associated with gut feelings, hunches, and mystical insights. Past research on intuition suggests that many managers and teams embrace intuition as an effective approach in response to situations in a turbulent environment where decisions need to be made immediately. Past research also revealed various benefits of intuition in decision making. These are: to speed up decision‐making process, to improve decision outcomes such as higher product quality, and to solve less structured problems (e.g., new product planning). This research examines the impact of team‐related antecedents (e.g., team member experience) and decision‐specific antecedents (e.g., decision importance) on intuition in NPD teams. The moderating impact of environmental turbulence between antecedent variables and intuition, as well as between intuition and team performance, is investigated. To test hypotheses, data were collected from 155 NPD projects in Turkey. The results showed that past team member experience, transactive memory systems (TMS), team empowerment, decision importance, and decision motives are significantly related to team intuition. The results also revealed that team intuition is significantly related to product success and speed‐to‐market, with both high and low levels of market turbulence. The findings of this study present some interesting practical implications to managers in order to improve intuitive skills of NPD teams. First, managers should make sure that team members have the relevant expertise to facilitate effective intuition. Second, managers should encourage and enhance TMS for effective intuition. If team members are not able to gain timely and unhindered access to others who have the needed experience and knowledge, past team member experience becomes idle in order to make effective intuitive judgments. Third, managers concerned with achieving successfully developed products and helping teams to make immediate but accurate decisions during NPD process should assign more power to team members so that they can rely on their intuitive skills.     

The impact of structural and contextual factors on trust formation in product development teams

This study examines antecedents of trust formation in new product development (NPD) teams and the effects of trust on NPD team performance. A theoretical framework relating structural and contextual factors to interpersonal trust and project outcomes was built, including task complexity as a moderating variable. Hypotheses from this model were tested with data on 93 product development projects carried out in Turkey. The findings showed that structural factors such as moderate level of demographic diversity, proximity of team members, team longevity, and contextual factors (procedural and interactional justices) were positively related to the development of interpersonal trust in NPD teams. The findings also revealed that interpersonal trust had an impact on team learning and new product success, but not on speed-to-market. Further, the findings showed that the impact of interpersonal trust on team learning and new product success was higher when there was higher task complexity. Theoretical and managerial implications of the study findings are discussed.     

New product development in Asia: An introduction to the special issue

Given the increasing importance of Asia, the purpose of this special issue is to broaden the scope of our understanding of New Product Development (NPD) by going beyond the traditional Western research settings and looking at how new products are developed in Asia. This paper introduces the special issue on NPD in Asia and identifies key patterns of similarities and differences between Asian and Western NPD practices. The paper highlights key similarities and differences in the areas of organizational/top management support; technological proficiency; customer/market orientation; information sharing; cross-functional interface; entrepreneurship orientation; NPD strategies; innovation orientation; contingencies of innovation orientation; innovative marketing strategies; NPD process; appointment of project managers; rewarding team members; success rate; and cycle time.     

Innovation Performance in New Product Development Teams in China's Technology Ventures: The Role of Behavioral Integration Dimensions and Collective Efficacy

In emerging markets, technology ventures increasingly rely on new product development (NPD) teams to generate creative ideas and to mold these innovative ideas into streams of new products or services. However, little is known about how behavioral integration (a behavioral team process) and collective efficacy (a motivational team process) jointly facilitate or inhibit team innovation performance in emerging markets—especially in China, the world's largest emerging‐market setting with collectivist and high power distance cultures. Drawing on social cognitive theory and behavioral integration research, this article elucidates the relationships between behavioral integration dimensions (i.e., collaborative behavior, information exchange, and joint decision‐making) and innovation performance and also examines how collective efficacy moderates these relationships in China's NPD teams. Results from a sample of 96 NPD teams in China's technology ventures reveal that information exchange is positively associated with innovation performance. Collaborative behavior positively but marginally influences innovation performance, whereas joint decision‐making does not relate to innovation performance. Moreover, collective efficacy demonstrates an important moderating role. Specifically, both collaborative behavior and joint decision‐making are more positively associated with innovation performance when collective efficacy is higher. In contrast, information exchange is less positively associated with innovation performance when collective efficacy is higher. This study makes important theoretical contributions to the literature on team innovation and behavioral integration in emerging markets by offering a better understanding of how behavioral and motivational team processes jointly shape innovation performance in China's NPD teams. This study also extends social cognitive theory by identifying collective efficacy as a boundary condition for the overall effectiveness of behavioral integration dimensions. In particular, this study highlights the condition under which behavioral integration dimensions facilitate or inhibit NPD team innovation performance in China.     

Determinants of IT Usage and New Product Performance*

Explosive growth of information technologies (IT) has prompted interest in examining the role of IT in new product development (NPD). Through desktop software and Web‐based tools, IT has been used to aid idea generation and product testing as well as for NPD activities such as process and portfolio management. Recent research suggests, however, that a gap exists between IT availability and usage. Given the importance of IT in creating business value through the development of new products and services, the present study seeks to identify factors that affect IT usage. Further, anecdotal evidence and conceptual studies intimate that the usage of IT tools for NPD can shorten time to market, can improve product quality, and can increase productivity. However, empirical substantiation of this impact is mostly nonexistent. The current study investigates the relationship between IT usage and two measures of new product performance: speed to market and market performance. Employing a mail‐survey methodology, the study uses data from a sample of practitioner members from the Product Development & Management Association to examine the effect of project risk, existence of a champion, autonomy, innovative climate, IT infrastructure, and IT embeddedness on the extent of IT usage. These data are also used to explore the impact of IT usage on speed to market and market performance. The results indicate that project risk, existence of a champion, and IT embeddedness positively affect the extent of IT usage for NPD. Additionally, IT usage positively and significantly influences the performance of the new product in the marketplace. Surprisingly, and contrary to popular belief, IT usage does not have any impact on speed to market. An important implication of this study is that IT usage influences performance but not in the way managers expect. Specifically, IT usage does not seem to affect speed to market but rather positively impacts the performance of the new product in the marketplace. This result suggests that IT usage in NPD provides far more value to firms than previously thought and provides evidence to support greater investments in IT for product development efforts. Other implications of the study are that unless IT is embedded into the NPD process and champions for IT tools exist, chances are that IT will not be used and its benefits will not be realized.     

When do we really need interpersonal trust in globally dispersed new product development teams?

Interpersonal trust refers to the willingness to make oneself vulnerable to the actions of another party. Trust is generally acknowledged as fostering knowledge exchange and thus contributing to new product development (NPD) team effectiveness. However, the conditions under which NPD teams come to rely more heavily on trust to facilitate effectiveness remain unclear. With burgeoning global collaboration on new product development, we analyze how the characteristics of global NPD teams, i.e., geographic dispersion, computer‐mediated communication (e.g., e‐mail, video‐conferencing), team membership flexibility, and national diversity moderate the trust–effectiveness relationship. Our results show that trust is more important under the condition of geographic dispersion, computer‐mediated communication, and national diversity. By specifying when trust influences NPD team effectiveness in globally dispersed teams, we discuss the theoretical implications and provide recommendations for management.     

Determinants of New Product Development Team Performance: A Meta‐analytic Review

New product development (NPD) has become a critical determinant of firm performance. There is a considerable body of research examining the factors that influence a firm's ability to successfully develop and introduce new products. Vital to this success is the creation and management of NPD teams. While the evidence for the use of NPD teams and the factors that determine their success is accumulating, there is still a lack of clarity on the team‐level variables that are most impactful on NPD success. This meta‐analytic study examines the effects of NPD team characteristics on three different measures of success: effectiveness (market success), efficiency (meeting budgets and schedules), and speed‐to‐market, requiring incorporation of a broader set of team variables than previous studies in order to capture more factors explaining NPD outcomes. Unlike a typical empirical study that considered no more than two team variables to predict NPD performance, this study combines research spanning eight team variables including team input variables (team tenure, functional diversity, team ability, and team leadership) and team process variables (internal and external team communication, group cohesiveness, and goal clarity). Results from 38 studies were aggregated to estimate the meta‐analytic effect sizes for each of the variables. Using the meta‐analytic results, a path analytic model of NPD success was estimated to isolate the unique effects of team characteristics on NPD effectiveness and efficiency. Results indicate that team leadership, team ability, external communication, goal clarity, and group cohesiveness are the critical determinants of NPD team performance. NPD teams with considerable experience and led by a transformational leader are more successful at developing new products. Effective boundary spanning within and outside the organization and a shared understanding of project objectives are paramount to success. Group cohesiveness is also an important predictor of NPD outcomes confirming the importance of esprit de corps within the team. The findings provide product development managers with a blueprint for creating high‐performance NPD teams.     

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.