New-product-development performance evaluation: a product-complexity-based methodology

Abstract

Companies are constantly striving to improve the performance of their new product development activities and process. One approach adopted is that of comparing current practice with that of another company. A major problem with this is finding similar products which are not direct competitors. The paper describes an attempt to produce an evaluation taxonomy and framework to enable comparisons to be made between apparently dissimilar products. This framework is based on a product's complexities (structural and market), its newness (to the company and the market) and related commercial constraints. By adopting this approach, it is hoped that ‘like with like’ comparisons may be made between products which are dissimilar in form. This would then avoid the problems of competitive rivalry excluding comparative evaluation and assessment. The theoretical and practical development of various measures of product complexity, newness, commercial constraints and other influencing factors is described. An assessment tool and methodology (ATM) is described which uses these measures to evaluate the product development activities and process performance of a company. The various ways in which the ATM may be used are explained. Significant findings relating to success in product development are shown from the initial results comparing successful product developments from a variety of companies.