A Laddering Approach to the Use of Methods and Techniques to Reduce the Cycle Time of New-to-the-Firm Products

Millson, Raj, and Wilemon have developed the earliest extant knowledge on the implementation of methods and techniques to reduce new product development (NPD) cycle time by suggesting a hierarchy of generic NPD acceleration approaches. The purpose of this article is to extend Millson, Raj, and Wilemon's hierarchy by recasting and augmenting the conceptual basis of their hierarchy for new-to-the-firm products. Taking this hierarchy of generic NPD acceleration approaches as a starting point, the authors set out to form a number of generic NPD acceleration approaches by surveying the literature and conducting an experience survey with academics and managers. A logical and purposeful implementation sequence subsequently is established by using the laddering technique. The results indicate that managers make tradeoffs in NPD with regard to speed, development costs, and customer value, and that not all generic NPD acceleration approaches need to be implemented in order to obtain the greatest effectiveness. © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.