New Product Development Process Research Articles

Insights for Managers About AI Adoption in New Product Development

OVERVIEW: The artificial intelligence (AI) revolution in new product development (NPD) has reached a critical juncture, demanding decisive action from business leaders. Our comprehensive study of key AI applications in NPD reveals a startling lack of adoption across industries, particularly in the United States. Despite the potential benefits, businesses also demonstrate weak intentions to adopt AI and low readiness regarding AI integration into NPD processes. Despite the low adoption rate, the study’s results offer a compelling picture of AI’s potential, including substantial positive impacts of AI use in key areas like product design, prototyping, testing, digital twin simulations, market analysis, and new product ideation. Benefits include accelerated development and markedly improved decision-making.

Influence of Entrepreneur Social Network on New Product Development Performance of Enterprises Under Intelligent Big Data

In the complex market environment, it is difficult for enterprises to innovate only by their own internal product resources. In order to improve the performance level of new product development, this paper puts forward the influence of entrepreneur social network on the performance of new product development under smart big data. The process of new product development is modeled, and the influence of entrepreneur social network on enterprise new product development performance is analyzed from two aspects: vertical network quality and horizontal network quality. According to the analysis results, build an intelligent big data platform, and use this platform to realize the mining and analysis of enterprise-related data; On this basis, EM algorithm is used to mine the performance data of enterprise new product development, DEA/AHP model is used to evaluate the performance level of enterprise new product development, and the evaluation results are combined with the influence model of entrepreneur social network on enterprise new product development performance to realize the influence analysis of entrepreneur social network on enterprise new product development performance. The experimental results show that the method is highly recognized by experts, which shows that the analysis results are reliable, and the correlation between entrepreneur social network and enterprise new product development performance can be obtained, which provides reference for enterprise new product development.

A conceptualization and empirical investigation of strategic sourcing approaches for engineer-to-order manufacturers

Since supplier capabilities often are essential for the success of a new product, previous studies suggest manufacturers to integrate strategic sourcing into the early stages of their new product development (NPD) processes. However, the literature on this topic offers only limited guidance for manufacturers in the engineer-to-order (ETO) context, where late strategic sourcing can be inevitable due to, for example, uncertainty or changing customer requirements. To address this gap in the literature, this article first draws on the literature to conceptualize five distinct strategic sourcing approaches that ETO manufacturers can employ. The approaches differ in terms of the timing of three strategic sourcing activities during the NPD process: make-or-buy analysis, supplier selection and supplier collaboration. To investigate the approaches, we conducted an embedded single case study involving a large turbine manufacturer. The study supports the existence of all the strategic sourcing approaches and identifies distinct conditions associated with each of them. Thereby, this article extends the literature with additional clarity about strategic sourcing in the ETO context, as well as when different approaches occur.

A Methodological Framework for New Product Development in Fuzzy Environments

New product development (NPD) is crucial for helping companies to maintain competitive advantages. In this study, a methodological framework is presented combining a novel Kano model and fuzzy axiomatic design (FAD) for improving the product development capability in the whole NPD process. In the Kano model, a novel mixed-class classification method is presented to classify each evaluation indicator agreed on by the majority, and to calculate the affiliation value based on category strength (CS) to display the degree to which the indicator belongs to a certain attribute. A new importance ratio is also proposed to adjust the importance of each indicator attribute. This helps to achieve higher customer satisfaction and improve the attractiveness of the product or service. FAD is then used to measure the gap between customer satisfaction and the company’s expected levels of satisfaction in terms of product functions. This enables the company to obtain more comprehensive information for decision-making. A case study is provided to verify the practicability of the proposed method. Sensitivity analysis proves the robustness of the results based on the number of respondents. Finally, comparative analysis with existing approaches demonstrates the strengths of the proposed method.

Factors affecting financial engineering and product development in Islamic Financial Institutions

Purpose This study aims to analyze Islamic financial institutions’ (IFIs) current financial engineering and product development procedures. Design/methodology/approach The paper is quantitative in nature and the survey questionnaire were collected from managers and IF experts working for Islamic Banks, Takaful and other IFIs in Turkey, Malaysia and UAE. Two-stage structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesis. Findings The findings highlighted that the Shari’ah Supervisory Board, Strategy and Planning of IFIs, Legal and Regulatory framework, pricing of a new product and financial performance positively impact the new product development (NPD) process. At the same time, Islamic values have no significant positive impact. Research limitations/implications When generalizing the research results, data collection from the right departments was the main limitation of the current study. Future research may opt to collect data only from Product Development Departments. Practical implications The findings of this study will allow IFIs to reflect on their present methods, procedures and Shari’ah compliance framework for the NPD process. Originality/value Factors affecting the product development and financial engineering process are discussed in the literature. The findings of this study can be regarded as building blocks for future academic research on product development and financial engineering in Islamic finance.

The implication of user-generated content in new product development process: A systematic literature review and future research agenda

This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of user-generated content (UGC) research within the context of new product development (NPD). A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted across three prominent databases, namely Web of Science, Scopus, and Science Direct, using keywords to identify relevant articles. 5585 of 13,381 articles were deemed relevant following the application of inclusion and exclusion criteria. These articles were then thoroughly analyzed to create a comprehensive review of the topic. The selection process involved evaluating the titles and abstracts of all publications that were discovered, and carefully choosing 136 articles for full-text review. From these, 58 articles were ultimately selected for detailed analysis in this study. The study highlights the role of UGC in augmenting NPD process and identifies potential areas for future research based on evidence derived from an SLR of articles published between 2012 and 2023. The research methodologies adopted in this paper involve descriptive analysis and TCM framework (T-themes, C-contexts, and M-methodologies). Finally, the article concludes by shedding light on its potential applications by providing four themes and highlighting the importance of future research in the field with five propositions.

Navigating challenges in new product development: Strategies for reducing failure rates in the medical device industry

New product development (NPD) in the medical device industry is critical for advancing healthcare technology and improving patient outcomes. Due to high usage of automated processes and applications in healthcare, the medical devices are not limited to products but have expanded to software as medical device. However, the failure rate of NPD projects in this sector remains high due to various challenges. This article explores the complex NPD process, which includes concept development, feasibility studies, design, and development, verification and validation, regulatory approval, and commercialization. Major reasons for project failures are identified, such as regulatory challenges, Change Management issues, market misalignment, communication failures, and insufficient risk management. Addressing these failure points requires a multifaceted approach. Regulatory pathways should be navigated with careful planning and compliance, and market needs must be thoroughly understood through comprehensive research. Resource allocation should be optimized to avoid constraints, and effective communication channels should be established to align all project participants. Finally, implementing rigorous risk management strategies, such as Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), can help mitigate potential risks early in the development process. By adopting these strategies, medical device companies can improve their NPD processes, reduce the failure rate of projects, and bring innovative and effective medical devices to market successfully.

Impact of contextual factors on new product development process: evidence from a large company in Thailand

This research investigates the impacts of contextual factors, including organization-, project-, product-, and market-related factors, on New Product Development (NPD) process and explores how these factors shape the NPD process of the company within a specific context—a large-sized company in Thailand. By interviewing 11 managers from a large-sized company in Thailand, the findings reveal different impact of the contextual factors on the company’s NPD process. Based on these findings, we develop a practical NPD model to overcome company-specific challenges and, consequently, offer valuable insights to enhance the NPD process in similar contexts. Importantly, our findings suggest that innovative companies should strategically integrate the route-to-market for radical innovation into their NPD process because it enhances the customer perception of the innovation’s value before commercialization, leading to the success of NPD. Our empirical evidence fills the gaps in the literature regarding the practical configuration of NPD processes in developing countries as well as large-sized companies, acknowledging the variation in the NPD process that depends on contextual factors where innovation occurs. It also provides detailed insights beyond most existing studies that investigate correlation of factors with the NPD process and offers practical implications for management involved in the NPD process, emphasizing the need for contextual awareness in formulating effective NPD strategies.

Two forms of customer involvement and new product development performance in the digital context: The moderating role of new product development stage

Customer involvement plays a critical role in firms' new product development (NPD), especially in the digital context. Prior research has distinguished between two forms of customer involvement: customers as an information source (CIS) and customers as co-developers (CIC). We build on this stream of literature and investigate the impact of CIS and CIC on firms’ NPD performance in the digital context by considering both the benefits and costs of these two forms of customer involvement. Furthermore, we explore the moderating role of NPD stage. Based on survey data collected from 263 informants, we show that whereas CIS has a positive effect on NPD performance, CIC has an inverted U-shaped relationship with NPD performance. More interestingly, the positive relationship between CIS and NPD performance is more pronounced in the ideation stage than in the product development stage, and the inverted U-shaped relationship between CIC and NPD performance is steeper in the product development stage than that in the ideation stage. In our additional analyses, we further divide the NPD stage into four stages and found similar results as our main analyses. Our study enriches the customer involvement literature and offers practical implications regarding whether, how, and when to involve customers in the NPD process.

Customer participation in new product development and the impact of remote work

PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic has presented small-to-medium size enterprises (SMEs) with a massive and unexpected challenge that has caused many to adjust their operational standards. Perhaps the biggest change has been the shift to remote work and away from traditional office spaces. Thus, this study aims to explore the implications of this shift within the context of customer participation in the new product development (NPD) process.Design/methodology/approachOur study surveys 218 small-to-medium size business-to-business firms in the USA on a variety of questions revolving around their NPD processes, customer collaboration and the shift to remote work. The authors use structural equation modeling in the AMOS program to analyze the data.FindingsThe findings indicate that both customer participation breadth and customer participation depth positively impact new product performance. Furthermore, these relationships are found to be contingent upon whether firms rely on remote work during the collaboration process. The results show that accessing a broader variety of explicit customer insights (i.e., breadth) has become easier in the increasingly remote collaboration environment. However, as face-to-face customer participation in NPD has decreased, the prospect of gaining deep, tacit customer knowledge relevant to product development (i.e., depth) has become more challenging.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the knowledge-based view of the firm and the customer participation literature, and it also has implications for managers adjusting to the shift to remote work following the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings provide additional evidence that customer participation is an effective strategy for SMEs (Morgan et al., 2018), but remote work has both positive and negative implications regarding the type of external knowledge that is acquired during customer participation in NPD.

Roles of Natural Language Processing in New Product Development Process: Literature Review

Customer satisfaction is a key success factor for a business. To provide products that meet customer satisfaction, companies must be able to understand the customers’ needs and desires. Technological developments nowadays have helped companies to understand customer desires more easily so that companies can provide products that satisfy their customer. Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a technology that allows computers to process human language. NLP is also commonly referred as text-mining. NLP has been utilized in the New Product Development (NPD) process. We compiled studies related to NLP and NPD and conducted a literature review to map out how far NLP has been utilized in NPD processes. We found that in this era of Big Data, current NLP studies most often have the goal to process text data from online reviews on e-commerce and from social media. By using NLP, large amounts of data can produce valuable Voice of Customer (VOC) information for product development. We also found that NLP technology also has been utilized in other NPD processes that do not involve VOC, such as the design stage, document processing, and extraction of requirements in the NPD process.

Optimizing New Product Development in The Hijab Industry: A House of Risk Analysis on Marketing and Design Process

XYZ Company, a Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise (MSME) based in Yogyakarta, specializes in producing hijabs but faces challenges in maintaining customer interest due to a misalignment between product designs and consumer preferences. To address this, the company actively engages in new product development (NPD), focusing on trend analysis and model innovation to cater to customer needs better. An essential part of minimizing risks during the NPD process involves evaluating and identifying potential pitfalls, particularly in marketing and design. This study employs the Hazard and Operability Review (HOR) method to assess risks systematically. Initial findings from HOR phase 1 reveal that inadequate competitor information (A3) leads to significant risks in competitor product identification (E3), contributing approximately 70.34% to the total Aggregate Risk Priority (ARP). Subsequently, in HOR phase 2, XYZ Company prioritizes ten mitigation actions, with conducting a comparative study of competitors' products (PA1) being the most critical, reflected by an ETDk value of 540. Keywords: House of Risk (HOR), Hijab Fashion, Hijab Industry, New Product Development (NPD)

Assessing the drivers and capabilities for faster product launch: a scale for time‐to‐market reduction in start‐ups

The acceleration of new product development (NPD) and market introduction is essential for companies to maintain competitiveness, enhance customer base, and achieve financial success. While the existing literature addresses time‐to‐market (TTM) reduction factors in a scattered manner, focusing on aspects like supplier and customer involvement, leadership, and learning, there is a noticeable gap in construct development and measurement validation for TTM reduction, particularly in start‐up contexts. Addressing this gap, our research introduces and validates a comprehensive, hierarchical scale designed to measure both the drivers and capabilities associated with TTM reduction in start‐ups. This innovative scale broadens the scope of traditional constructs, incorporating emerging dimensions such as transformational leadership, experiential learning, agile methodologies, and dynamic marketing strategies. We used our dataset and structural equation modeling (SEM) to validate the proposed scale, comparing the effect of drivers and capabilities on TTM reduction and the role of companies' age on this relationship. This approach confirms the scale's reliability and highlights its versatility. This research holds significant implications for enhancing NPD endeavors in start‐up environments. Introducing a methodologically robust scale equips managers with a powerful tool for setting realistic goals, monitoring progress, and assessing capabilities and contextual factors to refine NPD processes. Furthermore, the scale serves as a benchmarking instrument for start‐ups, aiding them in attracting investments and achieving a competitive advantage. Our study, therefore, stands as an essential contribution to the strategic management of NPD in the dynamic and evolving landscape of start‐ups.

Balanced or imbalanced, that is the question: The effect of R&D/marketing power structure on new product development time

Accelerating new product development (NPD) to gain a first-mover advantage is crucial in today's competitive business landscape. This paper aims to examine the effective power structure in NPD projects through the lens of two divergent theoretical perspectives: Information Processing Theory (IPT) and Resource Dependence Theory (RDT). While IPT suggests the benefit of a balanced decision-making power among various subunits, RDT advocates for a concentrated decision power for faster consensus and efficiency. Our research specifically investigates whether a balanced or imbalanced R&D/marketing power structure is more conducive to accelerating NPD time. This focus stems from the recognition that the interplay between R&D and marketing is critical in shaping NPD outcomes, though we acknowledge the broader context of multifunctional collaboration in NPD, including aspects like manufacturing. The paper tests two competing hypotheses: one advocating a balanced R&D/marketing power structure as per IPT, and the other supporting a dominant R&D/marketing power structure in line with RDT. We surveyed project leaders, R&D, and marketing personnel from 126 NPD projects across 87 Taiwanese firms. The empirical results significantly endorse the balanced R&D/marketing power structure hypothesis, suggesting that a harmonious collaboration between these two key subunits can expedite NPD processes. Our findings contribute to both academic research and managerial practice by offering nuanced insights into optimizing power structures within NPD teams, particularly highlighting the efficacy of a balanced R&D/marketing approach in the context of the prevalent theories.

The Impact of Transformational Leadership Climate on Business Sustainability and New Product Development Process: Moderating Influence of Strategic Flexibility

Transformational leadership is believed to be crucial factor behind an organization’s success. Studies have been conducted on leaders’ transformational leadership style, but there has been limited research on transformational leadership climate (TLC) in an organization and its effect on new product development process (NPDP) and business sustainability (BS). This study fulfills this gap and it also contributes to the literature by testing the moderating role of strategic flexibility (SF) between TLC and NPDP & BS. The study draws its hypothesis on the basis of contingency theory, upper echelons theory and transformational leadership theory. The authors collected the data from the top managers of private educational institutes affiliated with BISE Multan and used SmartPLS for analyses of data. Based on the analyses of 145 questionnaires, we report that TLC enhances NPDP and BS whereas SF has a significant moderation impact on the relationship between TLC and BS. For the educational institutes, we suggest top management to acknowledge and implement TLC in their organizations for sustaining their performance and for successful launching of new programs/services. Additionally, the importance of resource and coordination flexibility is emphasized for sustainability.

An empirical study on the factors influencing the new product development process in Indian automobile industries

Automobile manufacturing industries are looking at innovative ways to improve their company processes globally to maintain profitability in an increasingly complicated and competitive global market. There is fierce competition in the automotive business, which is evolving quickly. A crucial constituent of an organization’s success, survival, and vitality in such industries is the process of new product development. Several studies have been conducted to investigate the success factors of the new product development process in the Automobile industry. This research work tested the hypothesis that factors influence the process of new product development in the Automobile manufacturing industries of Maharashtra. The evidence was collected from higher officials of respective industries. The findings show that market orientation, market competition, and organizational culture have a significant impact on the New Product Development Process in the Automobile Manufacturing industry. The result of this study also shows that the role of governance and organization competence and resources do not impact the New Product Development Process. This suggests that management in the Automobile manufacturing industry strategy should focus on all the possible influential factors during the process of product development.

A microfoundational view of the interplay between open innovation and a firm's strategic agility

Open innovation can support firms looking to deploy strategic agility through product innovations during periods of market and technological change. However, existing research lacks a comprehensive understanding of the microfoundations that underlie strategic agility in the context of open innovation. We address this gap using an in-depth analysis of a firm's open innovation activities in support of new product development (NPD). Our analysis reveals that open innovation can help leverage NPD processes to drive technological innovations in response to changing market conditions. Under such circumstances, open innovation enables firms to deploy strategic agility by continually developing the product portfolio. Our study reveals six mechanisms that enable three mutually complementary practices of agility: knowledge-based agility at the firm-environment interface, behavioural agility in the firm's decision-making process, and organisational agility in the internal NPD process. We theorise the interplay between the mechanisms that constitute each practice and, in doing so, shed light on how they contribute to firm-level strategic agility.

An Empirical Investigation of Manufacturers’ Operations Innovations in New Product Development Enabled by E-Commerce Platforms

E-commerce platforms are playing an increasingly important role in influencing manufacturers’ supply chain and product decisions. An emerging supply chain innovation, known as the platform-based consumer-to-manufacturer (PC2M) model, has been initiated by several large e-commerce platforms based on established digital links between consumers and manufacturers. These links enable consumer inputs into manufacturers’ operations, indirectly by capturing consumer preferences from platform-accumulated big data and directly by enabling consumer interaction with manufacturers through the e-commerce platform. Although manufacturers are increasingly integrating PC2M into new product development (NPD), there is little research on operations innovations in connection with the PC2M model and its impact on manufacturers’ new product success. To fill this research gap, we investigate the PC2M model of JD.com, a leading e-commerce platform in China that launched the PC2M model in 2018. We first identify two uses of PC2M by manufacturers to facilitate product development—platform-enabled big data analytics (PBA) and platform-enabled simulated product trials (PST)—and explore how PC2M enables operations innovations in NPD. Next, drawing on the knowledge-based view, we develop research hypotheses and empirically examine whether PC2M adoption improves new product performance using a large-scale, transactional dataset from JD.com. Through a series of carefully executed analyses, our study consistently finds that use of either PBA or PST in manufacturers’ NPD processes improves new product performance. We also explore how these effects vary across product types and markets with varying new product introduction rates. The findings offer important managerial insights for improving new product success in today's data-rich environment.

Design concept evaluation based on cloud rough model and modified AHP-VIKOR: An application to lithography tool manufacturing process

Design concept evaluation is a wide domain of research as the production process of new product development is mainly based on the evaluations of experts. As different types of uncertainties like vagueness, randomness, and diversity essentially exist in the evaluation information, the manipulation models that deal with just one type of uncertainty are not appropriate for ranking the design alternatives. The integration of multiple approaches into a single mathematical model to create an effective framework is more useful for uncertain information manipulation. This paper presents an innovative group decision-making approach to evaluate design concepts by integrating cloud rough numbers, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method to introduce a novel cloud rough AHP-VIKOR model. The concept of cloud rough numbers is utilized by fusing the merits of the cloud model theory and rough approximations in addressing randomness in experts’ judgments and intrapersonal uncertainty for handling consensus inconsistency. Some new modified algebraic operations are introduced to remove the errors in already existing operations of cloud rough numbers. The cloud rough AHP technique is introduced to compute weights of design criteria by computing the cloud rough numbers of linguistic values and their reciprocals. Based on cloud rough values of positive and negative ideals, the individual regret, group utility values and evaluation indices are determined. Using the distance of evaluation indices from minimized cloud rough value, the design alternatives are ranked using different formulae. The significance of the proposed approach is illustrated with a real-world application in lithography tool manufacturing process. The out-performance and reliability of the proposed model is studied by a sensitivity analysis of different parameters in the method, and a comparison analysis with existing approaches.

New Product Development Process of Thai SMEs in Food Industry

Amidst the highly competitive landscape of the food industry, every company requires a new product development (NPD) process to create new products that can replace current offerings. This research aimed to investigate the NPD process in the food industry of Thai SMEs. A qualitative research method was employed, involving in-depth interviews, to probe NPD processes in this particular industry. The population of this study included people with expertise in NPD within Thai food SMEs from government agencies, academic institutions, and successful SMEs. Specifically, the sample comprised three representatives from government agencies, three academic institutions, and five successful SMEs in the food business. These representatives were selected through purposive sampling. It was found that the overall NPD process in the food industry of successful SMEs was consistent with the common NPD process with eight steps. However, each group in the sample had different views on the most critical component. Government agencies attached great importance to laws and regulations, while academic institutions paid attention to the R&D of new food product development, and successful SMEs devoted much attention to quickly responding to customer or market needs. There were four essential parts identified: 1) relevant laws and regulations; 2) appropriate production technology; 3) consumer sensory tests; and 4) market testing as being important for the NPD process. Moreover, the findings also indicated that the successful NPD process of Thai food SMEs was about continuous learning and improvement, which required an agile concept, involving a continuous multi-step process that remains open to flexibility and dynamic information feedback.