New Product Development Process: A Perspective for Reexamination

In spite of the increased sophistication of new product development processes, the percentage of successful new product introductions has not improved significantly in the last two decades. This calls for a reexamination of the new products development process. Yoram Wind and Vijay Mahajan suggest 13 strategic guidelines for the development of new or modified products. These guidelines, if followed, could improve a firm's chances of developing and introducing successful new products.     

Web-Based Product Development Systems Integration and New Product Outcomes: A Conceptual Framework

In hopes of improving the effectiveness of their new product development (NPD) processes, many firms increasingly are eager to adopt integrated web‐based NPD systems for NPD. However, few would argue that the mere use of web‐based NPD systems substantially will improve the NPD process. But we know little about how and when these systems can be used for enhancing NPD. An organization desiring to employ the web in its NPD process can use it at varying levels of functionality and sophistication, ranging from a tool for automating manual tasks and exchanging data to a means of integrating various intra‐ and interorganizational NPD functions and processes. At higher levels of technology sophistication or integration, an organization's NPD processes will get more integrated internally, i.e., between different stages of the NPD process and with the processes of its suppliers, technology providers, etc. Such integration of both internal and external NPD processes is considered important for successful innovation. Thus, on the surface, higher levels of web‐based systems integration may seem universally desirable. However, each increasing level of integration brings with it higher costs—not only the costs of expensive technology but also costs of implementing a complicated system, redesigning intra‐ and interorganizational processes, disrupting the status quo, and spending management time and energy during implementation. Therefore, it may not be wise for firms to jump blindly on the web‐based NPD bandwagon. High levels of web‐based NPD systems integration may be created when low levels of integration may not deliver the desired results. Further, if such systems are installed without appropriate conditions within and outside the firm, it may not be possible to exploit their full potential. As such, it is important to know how much web‐based NPD systems integration is suitable for different conditions. In this article, we develop a conceptual framework that focuses on how web‐based NPD systems integration can influence the outcome of NPD and how the relationship between systems integration and outcomes can be affected by various contextual factors. For this purpose, we draw on research in areas such as NPD, web‐based information systems, and organization theory and on many discussions we had with professionals and software vendors who deal with NPD and web‐based NPD systems. The contextual factors of interest in this framework are strategic orientation of the firm, product‐related factors, business environment, organizational factors, information technology factors, and partner‐characteristics. Managerial and research implications of the framework are discussed.     

A Model of Supplier Integration into New Product Development*

In many industries, firms are looking for ways to cut concept‐to‐customer development time, to improve quality, and to reduce the cost of new products. One approach shown to be successful in Japanese organizations involves the integration of material suppliers early in the new product development cycle. This involvement may range from simple consultation with suppliers on design ideas to making suppliers fully responsible for the design of components or systems they will supply. While prior research shows the benefit of using this approach, execution remains a problem. The processes for identifying and integrating suppliers into the new product development (NPD) process in North American organizations are not understood well. This problem is compounded by the fact that design team members often are reluctant to listen to the technology and cost ideas made by suppliers in new product development efforts. We suggest a model of the key activities required for successful supplier integration into NPD projects, based on case studies with 17 Japanese and American manufacturing organizations. The model is validated using data from a survey of purchasing executives in global corporations with at least one successful and one unsuccessful supplier integration experience. The results suggest that (1) increased knowledge of a supplier is more likely to result in greater information sharing and involvement of the supplier in the product development process; (2) sharing of technology information results in higher levels of supplier involvement and improved outcomes; (3) supplier involvement on teams generally results in a higher achievement of NPD team goals; (4) in cases when technology uncertainty is present, suppliers and buyers are more likely to share information on NPD teams; and (5) the problems associated with technology uncertainty can be mitigated by greater use of technology sharing and direct supplier participation on new product development teams. A supplier's participation as a true member of a new product development team seems to result in the highest level of benefits, especially in cases when a technology is in its formative stages.     

Spurring Cross‐Functional Integration for Higher New Product Performance: A Group Effectiveness Perspective*

Spurring integration among functional specialists so they collectively create successful, or high‐performing, new products is a central interest of innovation practitioners and researchers. Firms are increasingly assembling cross‐functional new product development (NPD) teams for this purpose. However, integration of team members' divergent orientations and expertise is notoriously difficult to achieve. Individuals from distinct functions such as design, marketing, manufacturing, and research and development (R&D) are often assigned to NPD teams but have contrasting backgrounds, priorities, and thought worlds. If not well managed, this diversity can yield unproductive conflict and chaos rather than successful new products. Firms are thus looking for avenues of integrating the varied expertise and orientations within these cross‐functional teams. The aim of this study is to address two important and not fully resolved questions: (1) does cross‐functional integration in NPD teams actually improve new product performance; and if so, (2) what are ways to strengthen integration? The study began by developing a model of cross‐functional integration from the perspective of the group effectiveness theory. The theory has been used to explain the performance of a wide range of small, complex work groups; this study is the first application of the theory to NPD teams. The model developed from this theory was then tested by conducting a survey of dual informants in 206 NPD teams in an array of U.S. high‐technology companies. In answer to the first research question, the findings show that cross‐functional integration indeed contributes to new product performance as long conjectured. This finding is important in that it highlights that bringing together the skills, efforts, and knowledge of differing functions in an NPD team has a clear and coveted payoff: high‐performing new products. In answer to the second question, the findings indicate that both intra‐ (or internal) and extra‐ (or external) team factors contribute and codetermine cross‐functional integration. Specifically, social cohesion and superordinate identity as internal team factors and market‐oriented reward system, planning process formalization, and managerial encouragement to take risks as external team factors foster integration. These findings underscore that spurring integration requires addressing the conditions inside as well as outside NPD teams. These specialized work groups operate as organizations within organizations; recognition of this in situ arrangement is the first step toward better managing and ensuring rewards from team integration. Based on these findings, managerial and research implications were drawn for team integration and new product performance.     

Marketing Hype: A New Perspective for New Product Research and Introduction

Marketing research procedures typically used to support new product development activities often emphasize the collection of data from potential customers, even when the product success depends on the decisions of a number of key stakeholders such as distributors, media, etc. Consequently, most conventional product introduction efforts focus on a target customer segment and ignore the needs of other stakeholders. These narrowly concentrated research efforts can lead to unfounded expectations regarding the product performance. Similarly, the lopsided focus on consumers can lead to reduced marketing effectiveness. Jerry Wind and Vijay Mahajan argue for the recognition of the process of "marketing hype," a set of prelaunch activities leading to the creation of a supportive market environment. This can lead to the creation of broader strategies that focus on the key stakeholders as subjects for new product research, and targets for the introductory marketing programs. This could lead to a richer understanding of the intergroup influences on the adoption of the new product and increase the chances of a successful new product launch.     

Building Dynamic Capabilities in New Product Development through Intertemporal Integration

Although successful development of a given product may help explain the current success of a firm, creating longer‐term competitive advantage demands significantly more attention to developing and nurturing dynamic integration capabilities. These capabilities propel product development activities in ways that build on and develop technological and marketing capabilities for future product development efforts and create platforms for future product development. In this article, we develop a conceptual model of a dynamic integration process in product development, which we call intertemporal integration (ITI). In its most general form ITI is defined as the process of collecting, interpreting, and internalizing technological and marketing capabilities from past new product development projects and incorporating that knowledge in a systematic and purposeful manner into the development of future new products. Research propositions outlining the relationship of ITI to performance are presented. We provide specific examples of managerial mechanisms to be used in implementing ITI. We conclude with implications for research and practice. Effective management of ITI can increase new product development success and long‐term competitive advantage. This implies that management needs to engage in activities that gather and transform information and knowledge from prior development projects so that it can be used in future development projects. Project audits, design databases in computer‐aided design (CAD) systems, engineering notebooks, collections of test and experimental results, market research and test market results, project management databases, and other activities will all be important in the acquisition of knowledge from prior new product development (NPD) projects. Managers also should initiate the creation and maintenance of databases of technical and marketing information from prior projects, job performance reports, seminars and workshops related to technological issues and advances, and publication of technical journals to assist in the process of knowledge acquisition. Similarly, techniques such as assigning project managers from earlier development projects, reusing key components and technologies, and developing a company‐wide methodology for managing projects can be used to boost the application and use of knowledge.     

New Product Development Structures: The Effect of Customer Overload on Post-Concept Time to Market

In corporate policy statements, seminars, journal articles—even in television commercials—the message comes through loud and clear: To remain competitive, we must do a better job of listening to our customers. Through close contact with customers, designers can more accurately identify market requirements, quickly refine product specifications, and thus reduce time to market. However, too much customer input can create confusion and duplication of effort, which ultimately increases time to market. In other words, some firms run the risk of over-listening to their customers. In a study of three global players in the electronic component industry, Srikant Datar, Clark Jordan, Sunder Kekre, Surendra Rajiv, and Kannan Srinivasan explore the effects of having too much input from customers. Specifically, they examine the relationship between a company's new product development structure and the volume of customer input, which in turn can affect time to market. The high-tech, fast-cycle firms examined in this study employ two distinct new product development structures: concentrated and distributed. A concentrated structure locates all product designers in one facility. This facilitates cross-product learning among designers, but limits designers' contact with customers and process engineers. A distributed structure disperses new product development among numerous manufacturing sites, giving designers close contact with customers and process engineers. However, a distributed structure limits designers' opportunities for cross-product learning. Analysis of 220 new product efforts reveals that the distributed structure offered a time-to-market advantage as long as these firms efficiently managed the level of customer interaction. When designers received input on the product design from no more than 25 customers, the distributed structure provided shorter time to market than the concentrated structure. Beyond the 25-customer level, time-to-market performance of the distributed structure degraded quickly and at an increasing rate. In such cases, more effective management of customer interaction might allow firms employing a distributed structure to enjoy the benefits not only of customer input, but also of improved coordination between product designers and process engineers.     

Perspective: Changing Product Development Strategy—A Managerial Challenge

By changing its product development strategies to match more closely the wants and needs of the marketplace, a firm can transform product development into a formidable competitive weapon. Just as formidible, however, is the effort that this transformation requires. Established organizational structures and corporate politics present significant barriers to acheiving fundamental changes in product development strategy. Christer Karlsson and Pär Åhlstrom present a case study of one firm's efforts to build capabilities for creating new products quickly and efficiently. Rather than focus on the content of the firm's product development strategies, however, they emphasize the process this electromechanical manufacturing firm used for changing its product development strategy. Drawing on their experiences as clinical researchers in this effort, they describe key lessons learned during the change process, and they offer suggestions for managing the process of changing product development strategy. They highlight five key lessons learned during the strategy development process. First, rather than viewing product development as a line function, a firm should view product development as a key executive area with responsibility for the company's competitive position. Second, market issues are the responsibility, not only of marketing, but also of product development and production. Third, to avoid corporate myopia, management control systems must consider not only time and money, but also acheivement of goals. Fourth, strategic planning flows more smoothly if the participants start by mapping the firm's past and present position before attempting to define the desired position. Finally, formulation of a product development strategy is the responsibility of a multifunctional team of executives. Managers should keep a few rules in mind when devising a process for formulating a product development strategy. First, adopt a learning strategy throughout the change process. Formulation of a product development strategy involves many abstract concepts, and a successful strategy requires cross-functional consensus. Second, combine tangible, direct activities with long-term strategic aims. Third, avoid the pitfall of best practice. The form that the product development organization takes depends, to a great extent, on the type of development work. Finally, before discussing future strategies, the strategy formulation process should focus on analyzing the current situation.     

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.     

创新顾客需求和产品设计开发管理的探讨

顾客需求和设计开发,决定产品定位和产品的质量。阐述了顾客需求和设计开发管理中存在的问题,说明了进行顾客需求和设计开发创新管理的必要性,并通过故障模式及影响分析的案例来说明创新管理的重要性。     

Faster New Product Development

Clearly today's business climate mandates the need for faster development of new products. Drawing upon his experience, Milton Rosenau describes several techniques that have not been mentioned explicitly in recent articles: short, focused development phases; management involvement and support; procurement and use of productivity improvements; multifunctional teamwork; distraction reduction; frozen specifications; and microcomputer-based project management software.     

成功开发新产品的配置关系研究

如何进行有效的新产品开发与提升竞争力一直是困扰着企业的重大难题。原因是影响新产品成功开发的因素错综复杂,难以把握,多达几十甚至百个之多,是亟待研究的重要课题,目前尚缺乏较深层次的研究。本文通过对这些众多复杂因素的问卷调查研究和分析,发现要成功实现新产品开发,需要有效地处理6个配置关系。这个结果能将众多因素的复杂管理简化为6个配置关系的管理,大大地降低了新产品开发复杂性带来的困惑和难度。     

Evaluating Customer Support During New Product Development—An Exploratory Study

Anyone who has struggled with a balky computer understands the importance of product support. Useful support for a high-tech product may take various forms, including installation, documentation, field service, user training, and product upgrades. All these forms of support share a common goal: achieving customer satisfaction with the product. To increase the likelihood of customer satisfaction with a high-tech product, a firm must carefully consider the product's support requirements during the design stage of the new-product development (NPD) effort. As Keith Goffin points out, however, relatively little research has been published about the manner in which product design influences product support. He suggests that firms may benefit from considering product support requirements during the design stage, in much the same way as design for manufacturability (DFM) techniques enable firms to increase ease of manufacture. In a survey of high-tech firms, he explores the ways in which companies evaluate product support requirements during the design stage. The study also examines whether firms use quantitative goals to focus the design team's attention on a product's support needs. To provide deeper understanding of the interrelationship between support requirements and product design, he also presents a case study involving Hewlett-Packard's development of a complex medical device. With responses from 66 companies, the survey offers the first empirical data on how companies plan for product support. Whereas DFM techniques involve consideration of manufacturability during the early stages of design, more than two-thirds of the companies in the study begin planning for support during the second half of the product development process. Only slightly more than one-half of the respondents report the use of a formal product support plan, although use of this type of document is more prevalent among the computer firms in the study. The companies in this study do not consider all aspects of support during product planning. The respondents also do not set quantitative goals for all aspects of support during the design stage. They typically set quantitative goals for service-related aspects of support—for example, product reliability targets such as annual failure rate—rather than for such support areas as user training. The survey responses identify a range of measures which could be used for performing a more comprehensive evaluation of support requirements during the design stage.     

Changing Strategies and Tactics for New Product Development

There has been a considerable amount of effort and writing devoted to improving the new product development process during the last two decades. Although there have been some surprises in this literature and in reports from the field on how to manage this complex business process, we now have a good view of the state-of-the-art practices that work and do not work to accelerate commercial success of new ventures. We know much less about how firms change their strategies for new product development.
In this article, we report on a study to investigate how companies change the way they originate and develop new products in manufacturing. We made no prior assumptions about what best practices might be for changing the direction of the new product development process, but we reasonably were sure there would be trends in how companies were attempting to create this strategic change. Even though one size does not fit all, there were significant trends in our findings.
We studied eight manufacturing firms using in-depth, open-ended interviews and were surprised to find that most of these companies are beginning to develop products that are new to the firm, industry, and the world (nearly half, or 10 of 21 new product projects), where they had not been eager for radical change in the past. These newer products likely are to be driven by a combination of market and technology forces, with general requirements being directed by internal forces: middle and top management. Results also indicate significantly that being able to marshal resources and capabilities is easier if change is less demanding and less radical, but when middle managers are driving the conversion of general requirements into specifications, resource issues have yet to be resolved. Implications of these findings are discussed for companies aspiring to change the entire process of new product development in their firms based on these significant results.     

Integrating Cross-Border Knowledge for Transnational New Product Development

Multi‐source knowledge integration, though widely regarded as fundamental for developing new products, remains obscurely understood and a significant challenge for organizations to accomplish. Prior research provides many insights on the approaches by which organizations transfer knowledge; however, how such transferred knowledge gets effectively embodied in products remains uncertain. Also unclear is whether different approaches for knowledge transfer differ in their effectiveness at realizing integration. This study analytically separates the transfer of cross‐border knowledge from its embodiment into products. It examines cross‐border knowledge transfer based on three different approaches: namely, the use of cross‐national teams, cross‐national communication, and cross‐national collaboration in the development of new transnational products. It examines cross‐border knowledge embodiment based on the extent to which new transnational products developed balance standardization with adaptation. The study uses a cross‐sectional survey administered to key members of transnational new product development teams in leading multinational companies across the world. The survey focuses on manufactured products that were developed across several industries: consumer products, consumer durables, and industrial products. Results from 90 new transnational product introductions surveyed reveal that knowledge integration is effective only when knowledge is transferred through cross‐national collaboration, and not when transferred through cross‐national teams and cross‐national communication. As integrating cross‐border knowledge in the development of transnational products involves making difficult trade‐offs for balancing standardization with adaptation, transferring knowledge through cross‐national collaboration stands out as being critical for successful outcomes. Although cross‐national teams and cross‐national communication enhance knowledge flows, they do not result in effective knowledge integration when developing new transnational products. These findings highlight an important point: All knowledge transfer approaches may not necessarily achieve knowledge integration. Hence, it is essential to systematically probe into the interrelationships between knowledge transfer and its effective integration and to identify an underlying set of contingencies that provide insights into when and why some knowledge transfer approaches are better than others at integrating knowledge.     

Benchmarking New Product Development Funding

Among the key success factors involved in new product development, identifying, and perhaps more precisely, defending appropriate funding levels can be one of the most difficult. This is especially true if your new products organization is new or if substantial changes have occurred either within your organization or your marketplace. Kathleen Pierz offers a benchmarking methodology developed as one element of a successful redesign and redirection of the new products organization at Ameritech advertising services, the Yellow Pages publishing unit of Ameritech.     

Improving the New Product Development Process: A Fractal Paradigm for High-Technology Products

Those professionals who are charged with improving the new product development (NPD) process may well feel as though they have been asked to bring order out of chaos. For every level in the organization, and for every step in the NPD process, they must contend with myriad, often interdependent choices—of products and processes; of tools and technologies; of proven best practices and hypothesized solutions. In turn, each choice may cascade into several additional decisions. With so many issues to address and so many variables to consider, practioners and researchers alike need a clear, but complete, framework for exploring, understanding, and improving the NPD process. To help bring some order to the study and the practice of NPD management, W. Austin Spivey, J. Michael Munson, and John H. Wolcott introduce a new metaphor, or paradigm, for product development: a fractal paradigm. Like some fractal images, their framework for understanding the essence of NPD rests on the concept of self-similarity. In other words, the picture their framework provides for understanding and managing the NPD process consists of the same set of concerns, regardless of the level at which the process is viewed. They developed this fractal paradigm during an empirical study of technology transition in a highly successful federal laboratory organization. Whether the focus is on the organization, the division, the team, or the individual, the essence of the NPD process as viewed through their framework comes down to two sets of factors: management factors and resource factors. In turn, each of these factors cascades into several interrelated sets of concerns. For example, the management factors comprise concerns about leadership and the management system. The resource factors include concerns about information, infrastructure, time, and money. Regardless of the level of detail at which the framework is viewed, improving the NPD process requires attention to all of these factors, by all levels within the organization. For example, visionary leadership on the part of senior management will have little effect if middle management and line supervisors fail to provide the necessary leadership for their respective groups of subordinates. Notwithstanding the complexity of the NPD process, the fractal paradigm focuses attention on those few key factors that must be managed continually, throughout all levels of the organization, to ensure successful commercialization of new products.     

Marketing/R&D Interaction in New Product Development: Implications for New Product Success Rates

A growing body of literature has evolved which deals with the interaction between marketing and R&D in new product development. Much of this research, unfortunately, fails to associate various variables with new product success levels. Thus, it cannot suggest consensus guidelines for marketing's involvement to increase the performance levels of new products in the market place. Richard Hise, Larry O'Neal, A. Parasuraman and James McNeal report results of their analysis of the new product development procedures of 252 large manufacturing companies. The authors conclude that collaborative efforts between marketing and R&D during the actual designing of new products appear to be a key factor in explaining the success levels of new products, that management effort should focus on the design stage of the new product development process rather than on the earlier and later stages and that R&D's contributions cannot be ignored while decisions are made about marketing's role in developing new consumer and industrial products.     

Autonomous Teams and New Product Development

An autonomous team is an emerging tool for new product development (NPD). With its high degree of autonomy, independence, leadership, dedication, and collocation, the team has more freedom and stronger capabilities to be innovative and entrepreneurial. Several anecdotal cases suggest that autonomous teams are best when applied to highly uncertain, complex, and innovative projects. However, there is no empirical study to test such a notion. Moreover, autonomous teams are not a panacea, and implementing them can be costly and disruptive to their parent organization. When should this powerful, yet costly tool, be pulled out of the new product professional's toolbox? This paper attempts to answer this question. The objective of this study is to explore under which circumstances an autonomous team is the best choice for NPD. Based on contingency and information‐processing theories, autonomous teams are hypothesized to be more effective to address projects with: (1) high technology novelty and (2) radical innovation. To test these hypotheses, the relative effectiveness of four types of team structures: autonomous, functional, lightweight, and heavyweight are compared. The effectiveness measures include development cost, development speed, and overall product success. Vision clarity, resource availability, and team experience are the controlled variables. The empirical results based on the data from 555 NPD projects generally support the research hypotheses. Relative to other team structures, autonomous teams are more effective in addressing projects with high technology novelty or radical innovation. The results also suggest that heavyweight teams perform better than other teams in developing incremental innovation. These results provide some evidence to support contingency and information‐processing theories at the project level. Given the importance of the development of novel technology and radical innovation in establishing new businesses and other strategic initiatives, the findings of this study may not only have some important implications for NPD practices but may also shed some light on other important topics such as disruptive innovation, strategic innovation, new venture, corporate entrepreneurship, and ambidextrous organization.     

Product Development Strategy: An Integration of Technology and Marketing

Although it seems obvious that a new product development strategy must bring together marketing and R&D strategies, the conceptual development of marketing and R&D strategies has taken place in relative isolation. More than ten years ago, when Professor Harry Nyström began his research program on product development in Swedish firms, he realized that the isolation wasn't an appropriate point of view. He began to construct a conceptual framework for analyzing product development strategies that incorporated many more variables than had traditionally been considered. The latest set of firms in the research program are four pulp and paper companies. They are in mature, process industries, quite unlike the earlier study firms. Yet many of the same propositions from the earlier research still hold. In this article, Professor Nyström presents the most recent version of his framework to help managers develop an integrated product development strategy.