Major New Products: What Distinguishes the Winners in the Chemical Industry?

What makes a new product a winner? This empirical study looks at success factors in product development in the chemical industry of four countries. The 103 projects studied in both North America and Europe were substantial ones and all were undertaken by large firms; about two-thirds of these projects succeeded. Robert Cooper and Elko Kleinschmidt identified the key project success factors by comparing the winners to the losers. Product differentiation was the most importance influence on success. Synergies had only moderate influence on project outcomes, as did order of enter (innovator versus follower) and stage of product life cycle. Surprisingly, important aspects of the external environment, including both market attractiveness and competitive situation, were not strong determinants of success. Although focused on one industry, the results of this study likely have broader applicability to wide variety of industries.     

New Product Strategies: What Distinguishes the Top Performers?

In this second article for The Journal of Product Innovation Management , Robert G. Cooper shows that firms can be clustered according to five general types of new product strategies. Depending on the measure of success, some strategies are more successful than others. One strategy, however, stands out for its success on all measures. Others are consistently unsuccessful. The strategies are described in such ways that managers can position the strategies of their own firms and compare their results with those of the firms Professor Cooper studied.     

Organizational Influences on the New Product Development Process in Financial Services

The last decade has been notable for increasing levels of environmental turbulence brought about by technological advances, deregulation, consumer sophistication, and competition. Consequently a premium has been placed on the ability of managers to differentiate their products and maintain competitive advantages. This may be achieved by developing an organizational climate that is responsive to change and supportive of new product initiatives. In his article, Des Thwaites draws on the established literature and a panel of informed opinion from the financial services sector to identify 12 characteristics of an organization that influence the effectiveness of the new product development process. United Kingdom building societies are examined to determine the emphasis given to these critical aspects of innovation. Three underlying factors, communication, people and mission, explain much of the variance among building societies. Five discrete groupings of firms are identified, and significant differences between their orientations are determined across a range of variables supporting new product development. While the empirical section of the study relates to a specific industrial sector, several issues and the recommendations transcend industry boundaries.     

Testing Market Segment Acceptance of New Designs of Industrial Services

This article investigates the designing of a new furnace tube cleaning service to compete successfully against two existing competitors. Arch Woodside and William Pearce report the results of a marketing experiment in which data were obtained from a total of 33 plant engineers and maintenance managers in chemical plants and oil refineries. These respondents assigned shares of requirements to competing services. In all, nine different service problem scenarios were solved by each subject. The marketers of the new service, following the study's recommendations, decided to create four specific, segment-based marketing strategies. Following implementation, the company's position improved modestly during the next six months in three of the four market segments.     

Expert Systems: An Emerging Technology for Selecting New Product Winners

Sundaresan Ram and Sudha Ram describe INNOVATOR, an expert system that they have developed to assess the success potential of new products in the financial services industry. They provide details on key aspects of the system: how knowledge is collected from experts and encoded; how a user interacts with the system to obtain recommendations on specific new products; and how the inference engine of the system arrives at the final recommendation. They discuss how INNOVATOR can, if necessary, be linked to external databases for additional data inputs. The authors also recommend alternative ways of eliciting the expertise of new product planners and different ways of programming their knowledge into the system. They highlight the key advantages that an expert system provides over conventional new product planning models. With its ability to detect potential winners early, an expert system like INNOVATOR can significantly contribute to the new product development process.     

捷豹路虎的金融“平衡法则”

通过架构金融平台,捷豹路虎中国希望能让更多的力量参与到经销商网络的拓展运动中,并以此平衡和撬动整个供应链上的资源。     

Positioning of Financial Services for Competitive Advantage

The financial services sector is becoming increasingly competitive. Deregulation allows formerly nonoverlapping financial institutions to compete. To survive and succeed, financial institutions must develop strong positions. A position summarizes the distinctive competence that a company seeks to convey to the marketplace to establish its competitive advantage. In this article, Christopher Easingwood and Vijay Mahajan describe a number of positioning attempts in the financial services sector. They are guided by two central objectives.
The first is to show how the special characteristics of services give rise to eight different positioning possibilities for financial services organizations. These positions present a range of potential options from which the manager may choose. For instance, an "extra service" position is one option, a "performance" position is another.
The second objective is to demonstrate the use of the positioning framework, with examples taken from the insurance sector to provide illustrations rather than a complete picture of insurance positioning.
The article concludes with a number of recommendations. For instance, financial institutions should avoid overcrowded positions and occupy underexploited positions. If accepted, these recommendations should help the financial services executive develop a competitive positioning strategy.     

产业融合:产业发展及经济增长的新动力

在信息化进程中，出现了电信、广播电视和出版等部门在数字融合基础上的产业融合。这是对传统产业体系的根本性改变，成为一种新的产业革命。产业融合导致了许多新产品与新服务的出现；开辟了新市场，使更多的新参与者进入；增强了竞争性和新市场结构的塑造；促进了资源的整合；带来了就业增加和人力资本发展；并派生出信息产业发展的巨大增值机会。因此，产业融合成为产业发展及经济增长的新动力。随着产业融合在整个经济系统中越来越具有普遍性，它将导致产业发展基础、产业之间关联、产业结构演变、产业组织形态和产业区域布局等方面的根本变化，对整个经济与社会产生综合影响。     

航天金融服务业发展模式探讨

中国航天科技集团公司第四次工作会提出“构建航天科技工业新体系,建设国际一流大型航天企业集团”的发展目标,明确了六大战略转型的发展方针,确立了宇航系统、导弹武器系统、航天技术应用产业和航天服务业四大主业。其中,航天服务业的发展重点包括卫星及其地面运营服务、金融服务、国际化服务、信息服务及软件、房地产经营等五大业务板块。2008年底,     

装备制造业集群耦合结构:一个产业集群研究的新视角

我国老工业基地的装备制造业集群一直游离于产业集群理论与实证研究之外，本文在国内外研究人员产业集群研究成果基础上，结合装备制造产业特点，提出耦合的研究视角。文章借鉴系统耦合的思想，把装备制造业集群要素间的经济联系和内在产业关联抽象为制造企业耦合、集群产业耦合以及区域社会网络耦合三层结构，构建装备制造业集群耦合结构；结合集群耦合度模型，研究装备制造业集群的耦合机理和影响集群要素耦合度的因素。并以沈阳装备制造业集群为例，分析沈阳装备制造业集群发展中存在的问题，相应提出促进集群要素耦合的对策。     

The New Institutionalism: What Can It Learn from the OLD?

The new institutional labor economics is a promising development, but it has faults that could be remedied by an infusion of theoretical and methodological insights from the old institutional approach. This claim is illustrated by a critical analysis of three key concepts: asset specificity, defefrred rewards, and opportunism. The essay concludes with a set of methodological precepts to guide future research.     

加强财务监管促进医卫事业发展

本文从财务监管的角度提出加强医院财务管理的措施.     

U.S. Financial Services Consolidation: The Case of Corporate Credit Unions

This paper estimates a stochastic cost frontier forU.S. corporate credit unions using call report datafor 1992–1997. The results indicate that corporatecredit unions were 91 percent cost efficient, onaverage, over this period and that institutionspassing a larger percentage of their investments toU.S. Central Credit Union are more cost efficient. However, the economic magnitude of estimatedefficiency gains from investment concentration isfound to be modest. We conclude that the currentthree-tier hierarchical structure for the U.S. creditunion industry is likely to endure.     

Gender Pay Gap,Voluntary Interventions and Recession: The Case of the British Financial Services Sector

State institutions and trade unions put pressure on the British financial services sector to reform its gendered practices and reduce its gender pay gap following both the recession and the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) Inquiry (2009). This article considers the effect of these pressures by comparing the gender pay gap pre‐, during‐ and post‐recession periods. Using Labour Force Survey data, the article finds a marginal pay gap reduction in the post‐recession period, a reduction that was greater in financial services than in the rest of the economy. However, the financial services pay gap remained resilient and substantially higher at the top of the earnings distribution. Union membership and collective bargaining were shown to reduce the pay gap including for women members with children. In contrast, countervailing factors, including ethnicity and post‐recession longer working hours, contributed to the pay gap. The study reveals the limitations of voluntary interventions against a resilient gendered culture.     

金融危机下的工业经济发展困境:内因抑或外因——基于浙江、江苏、广东和山东四省工业经济的比较研究

2008年我国工业经济出现的猛烈收缩更多是源于全球性金融危机的外生冲击和前期国内结构性政策调整,还是源于工业经济自身的增长陷阱?本文通过对浙江等四个发达地区工业经济的比较分析,认为2008年以来工业经济的表现很大程度上内源于工业经济的结构锁定和增长能力的脆弱性,全球性金融危机和前期结构性政策调整只是外因。所以,扭转时下工业经济发展困境,确保工业经济持续增长,只有通过继续推进工业经济转型升级和提升工业经济的整体抗风险能力。     

工业经济学新体系研究

当工业经济学的客观基础发生了极大的变化，传统的工业经济学已经难以驾驭的时候，工业经济学本身应该做怎样的调整和发展呢?《新编工业经济学》的研究对象是：在市场经济条件下，工业生产以及同工业生产直接相关的经济行为、经济关系和经济规律，包括工业品生产、交换、消费过程中的一切经济现象。工业生产是采取自然物质资源，通过加工制造活动进行物质形态转换，使之成为人类生产和生活所需要的物质资料的过程。而在经济学的学科分类中，工业经济学就是研究工业生产领域中有限资源的有效利用和配置，以及由此产生的社会生产关系和人类福利问题的经济学分支学科。工业经济学是一门与时俱进的学科，关于其学科体系的研究尚处于初步阶段，而且工业经济学具有开放性。所以，工业经济学的学科体系是可发展的。随着研究的深入，工业经济学的学科体系也将不断完善和更具科学性。     

自助金融服务业务风险防控问题分析

随着中央文件关于消除农村地区空白点和中国人民银行关于开展银行卡助农取款等相关文件的下发,金融机构对农村地区金融服务重视程度明显提高,各金融机构纷纷进军农村市场。为节约成本,在固话终端基础上创新研发的自助金融服务业务,得到各金融机构的青睐,受到了客户的普遍欢迎。但由于自助金融服务业务尚在初期阶段,政策风险、现金风险、技术风险、管理风险和操作风险等均已成为自助金融服务业务推广的"拦路虎"。可以通过丰富产品功能,加强现金监管力度,强化科技支撑作用,规范内控管理体系,营造良好使用环境等手段,不断完善风险防范措施,建立风险报告制度,健全风险化解机制,从而推进自助金融服务业务的健康、持续开展。     

Grumpier Old Men: Age and Sex Differences in the Evaluation of New Services

Little research attention has centered on how age and sex affect consumers' evaluations of new products and services. In this study an individual's age and sex are associated with his or her evaluation of new services, that is, newly released motion pictures. Using data acquired from publicly available and proprietary sources, nearly 2,100 motion pictures released in the United States from 1982 through 2000 were analyzed. The results show that older consumers are more critical of new services and rate them lower after consuming them relative to younger ones. The results also show that women evaluate new services significantly more favorably than men. Interestingly, these results appear robust because women did not rate products that are normally developed and targeted to men (e.g., action/adventure and science‐fiction movies) lower than men evaluated them; no evidence to support the notion of a “chick flick” was found. Implications for conducting marketing research when developing new products and services are offered.     

What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services by Anthony W. Ulwick

Books reviewed in this issue:

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  What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services

       
  
  

New Products and Financial Risk Changes

The historic focus of new products research has been on the ability of new products to enhance the profitability and competitive position of the innovating firm. In this article, Timothy Devinney shows that there exists an overlooked and potentially significant side effect associated with new product innovations: financial risk changes. He reports that significant financial risk changes occurred in approximately 50% of the new product announcements he examined. The magnitude of these financial risk changes translates into overestimates or underestimates of the firm's cost of capital by 17% to 18% and is strongly and positively related to the size of the firm and the firm's new product innovation activity.