NPD Process Research Articles

Macroergonomic Approach for Improving the Municipal Waste Management System in Jakarta

 Abstract—To solve the complex problem of the waste management system in Jakarta, there needs to be a comprehensive approach to the system. One of the approaches that could be used to solve this problem is the macro- ergonomic approach, where Macro Ergonomic Analysis and Design (MEAD) is one of its methods. Through this approach, it is known that the main problem of this system is human error in disposing waste. Improving rubbish bins is a solution that could help the problem technically, where New Product Development Processes (NPD Processes) is implemented to develop the rubbish bin. The new design of rubbish bin has some additional features that would decrease human error in disposing waste. This paper will discuss the color coding, signs of waste segregation, differentiation in locating disposal holes, different types of container lids, types of trash bag hooks, the swing feature of the bin, and the ideal information media of a rubbish bin. I. INTRODUCTION Collecting household disposals and industrial waste is one of the most difficult operational problems faced by local authorities in any large city. This problem is also faced by Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia. With an increasing number of populations due to the rising number of urbanization every year, Jakarta's waste volume is rapidly increasing. The volume of waste generated in Jakarta could reach up to 6500 tons per day. To keep the city clean, the government's Cleaning and Landscaping Agency faced some major waste disposal problems, such as public awareness about cleanness, waste- handling facilities, human resources, legacy, periodic targets, and other problems related to open dumping. A solution is needed to overcome this complex problem. This research is done by redesigning the rubbish bin used in Jakarta, as an effective solution for improving Jakarta's waste handling system,

Improving firm performance through NPD: The role of market orientation, NPD orientation and the NPD process

Achieving sustained business performance is a challenge for many firms. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the food and packaged goods domain where manufacturers are significantly affected by globally aggressive competitors and retailers. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm this study of 173 food manufacturers finds that the NPD process is a capability enabling the translation of a firm’s market orientation and its NPD orientation, both resources, into superior NPD program success, thereby enhancing overall firm performance. The results help clarify the somewhat ambiguous relationship between market orientation, product innovation and firm performance and demonstrate that firms wishing to leverage product innovation must have the cultural and structural foundations of both a market orientation and NPD orientation. Importantly, they must implement a well-executed NPD process in order to translate these broader firm resources into performance outcomes.

A Fuzzy Linguistic Go/No-Go Decision Model in New Product Development

New product development~(NPD) is a quite risky and uncertain process. In order to reduce the risks and uncertainties, the firms need to evaluate their new product at each step carefully and make accurate decisions. This paper focuses on uncertain go/no-go decisions in the NPD process. To do so, a probabilistic approach is firstly proposed to elicit a probability distribution of the gate-team's judgement. Secondly, a probabilistic approach is proposed to perform group and multicriteria aggregation with the random interpretation of group weights and criteria weights.

Multiple Criteria Decision Making Technique in New Product Development Management

Although New Product Development Management (NPDM) is a new successful, challengeable and important strategy in modern companies, understanding the key success factors in this approach is not only helpful, but also productive in reducing managerial decision-making risks. In this paper, after expanding the related literature review, consulting with teachers, administrators and experts on identifying key factors affecting NPD, the researcher provided the basic questionnaire, and then identified key success factors and their indicators in NPD process management. In the next step 20 experts and managers were asked to fill out a questionnaire according to analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approach in which all key factors and their indicators were ranked by Expert Choice software based on Cooper NPD stage-gate model and all gapes between present and ideal conditions with managerial approach were analyzed by utilizing gape comparison test. Findings showed that improving competitive position, reducing managerial and production failure risks and enhancing success of the NPD process in this company would improve NPDM by determination of priorities and identification of the key factors in SAMA.

New Product Development Practices and Early‐Stage Firms: Two In‐Depth Case Studies

New product development practices (NPD) have been well studied for decades in large, established companies. Implementation of best practices such as predevelopment market planning and cross‐functional teams have been positively correlated with product and project success over a variety of measures. However, for small new ventures, field research into ground‐level adoption of NPD practices is lacking. Because of the risks associated with missteps in new product development and the potential for firm failure, understanding NPD within the new venture context is critical.Through in‐depth case research, this paper investigates two successful physical product‐based early‐stage firms' development processes versus large established firm norms. The research focuses on the start‐up adoption of commonly prescribed management processes to improve NPD, such as cross‐functional teams, use of market planning during innovation development, and the use of structured processes to guide the development team. This research has several theoretical implications.The first finding is that in comparing the innovation processes of these firms to large, established firms, the study found several key differences from the large firm paradigm. These differences in development approach from what is prescribed for large, established firms are driven by necessity from a scarcity of resources. These new firms simply did not have the resources (financial or human) to create multi‐ or cross‐functional teams or organizations in the traditional sense for their first product. Use of virtual resources was pervasive. Founders also played multiple roles concurrently in the organization, as opposed to relying on functional departments so common in large firms. The NPD process used by both firms was informal—much more skeletal than commonly recommended structured processes. The data indicated that these firms put less focus on managing the process and more emphasis on managing their goals (the main driver being getting the first product to market). In addition to little or no written procedures being used, development meetings did not run to specific paper‐based deliverables or defined steps. In terms of market and user insight, these activities were primarily performed inside the core team—using methods that again were distinctive in their approach. What drove a project to completion was relying on team experience or a “learn as you go approach.” Again, the driver for this type of truncated market research approach was a lack of resources and need to increase the project's speed‐to‐market.Both firms in our study were highly successful, from not only an NPD efficiency standpoint but also effectiveness. The second broad finding we draw from this work is that there are lessons to be learned from start‐ups for large, established firms seeking ever‐increasing efficiency. We have found that small empowered teams leading projects substantial in scope can be extremely effective when roles are expanded, decision power is ground‐level, and there is little emphasis on defined processes. This exploratory research highlights the unique aspects of NPD within small early‐stage firms, and highlights areas of further research and management implications for both small new ventures and large established firms seeking to increase NPD efficiency and effectiveness.

Special Issue on Innovation and Product Development

This special issue brings together a collection of papers seeking insight into the significance of accounting and controls for dealing with the multitude of issues and problems that surround NPD processes. It augments a growing body of research dedicated to understanding management accounting and management control systems (MCS) and NPD. The topics covered are wide-ranging such as the use of interactive control systems and the role of calculations in innovation.

New product development capabilities and new product performances: moderating role of organizational climate

Corporate culture plays a key role in determining the working climate, leadership style, strategy formulation, organization behavior, and processes of the firm (Saffold, 1988). Culture must permeate an organization to make a difference (O'Reilly, 1997). In the RBV, culture is a valuable organizational resource because it is created over time, is intangible, is difficult to imitate, and has the potential for moving the firm to a position of competitive advantage (Helfat & Peteraf, 2003). Studies show that a strong corporate culture contributes to improved performance, directly in terms of specific achievements (Deshpandé, Farley, & Webster, 1993), or indirectly by enhancing the commitment and motivation associated with those challenges linked to success (Lim, 1995). The goal of this research is to investigate organizational climate factors' (innovativeness and open-mindness) moderating role in the various relationships between NPD capabilities and NPD performance. To understand the specific role of organizational climate factors in the various NPD processes, we suggest viewing NPD capabilities as a composition of various steps (idea generation, idea screening, technical development, market test, and commercialization), and adopted diverse NPD performance metrics (sales change, sales growth, profit performance, market share performance, ROI, ROA, and cash flow). We surveyed 84 US firms (originally from the list of the High-Technology Marketplace Directory) that participated in our research. All companies met the required criteria of developing and commercializing new products. The key informant was the project manager of a recently-developed product. The results of the main effects between new product development capabilities and NPD performance show that most of new product capabilities, except technical development, are positively associated with various NPD performance metrics. For example, idea generation is positively associated with sales growth, market share, operation profit, ROI and ROA. Idea screening is significantly associated with sales growth, market share, operation profit, ROI and ROA. Commercialization also showed positive relationships with sales growth, market share, operation profit, ROI and ROA. However, all of the relationships between technical development and new product performance are not significant. Market test also has no significant relationship with operation profit or ROA. Based on the moderated regression analysis results, we found a significant moderating role of open-mindness culture in the link between NPD capabilities and NPD performance. For instance, open-mindness moderates the effects of idea generation on sales growth, market share, operation profit, ROI, and ROA. Open-mindness also moderates the effects of idea screening on sales growth, market share, operation profit, ROI, and ROA. However, for technical development only the effect on the market share is moderated by open-mindness. For market test and commercialization, open-mindness only has significant moderating effect on sales growth and market share. For innovativeness culture, the findings indicate that innovativeness influences the relationship between idea generation and sales growth, market share, operation profit, ROI, and ROA. Innovativeness also moderates the effects of idea screening on sales growth, market share, operation profit, ROI, and ROA. When we examined commercialization, we found significant interaction effects with sales growth, market share, operation profit, ROI and ROA performance. Although not all performance dimensions are supported in our hypotheses, the results suggest that researchers must understand the research context and choose meaningful variables of NPD performance dimensions for suggesting appropriate explanations. Additional research is needed to test other types of organizational cultures. Organizational culture is a complex construct that encompasses many dimensions. Future research could be directed toward the inclusion of other important dimensions.

Applying Industrial Design and Cost Engineering to New Product Development in Early‐Stage Firms

For early‐stage firms, successful commercialization of each new product is critically important, given the shortage of financial resources, the limited product portfolio, and small staffs typical of such firms. This paper investigates two key contributing factors for new product success in entrepreneurial firms: designing products that are appealing to target users in both form and function and designing products that can be manufactured at an attractive margin so that the new enterprise can generate much needed positive cash flow. These two practices—industrial design and cost engineering—are well studied in the context of larger, established corporations but have not been explored in the context of new ventures. This study focuses on the intensity of individual and combined adoption of design and cost engineering as measured by product development efficiency and effectiveness. The study was conducted on a homogeneous sample of early‐stage firms that develop physical, assembled products where design plays a role. The data collection focused only on the first product developed by each firm respectively. The results show that when implemented together, industrial design and cost engineering enhance both the effectiveness and efficiency of new product development in early‐stage firms, to greater effect than each does individually. Intensive individual adoption of practices had a negative impact on development efficiency measures such as development cost and duration. Only cost engineering individually had a beneficial impact on development effectiveness as measured by product margins. When combined, these two practices had a beneficial impact on both development duration and cost for the company's first commercial product, thereby reducing time‐to‐market and precious cash expenditures while maximizing project breakeven timing. The most successful firms in the study achieved a balance between creative innovation and cost discipline in the NPD process with third‐party design and manufacturing resources. It was found that integrating third‐party design firms into the development process can challenge, simplify, and add additional creative resources to the core entrepreneurial team, maximizing the ability to catalyze beneficial tension between creativity and cost discipline.

The effect of strategic alliance resource accumulation and process characteristics on new product success: Exploration of international high-tech strategic alliances in China

This paper examines two research questions: (1) how do strategic alliance resources influence new product outcomes, and (2) how do these effects differ under different NPD process characteristics. By integrating resource-based view and coordination literature, the authors argue that both marketing and technology resources demonstrate independent and interactive effects on new product innovativeness, speed to market, and market performance. Further, the individual effects of marketing and technology resources are moderated by the process characteristics of partner interdependence, while the interactive effect between marketing and technology resources is moderated by the development process characteristic of task interdependence. Using primary dyadic data collected from 142 international high-tech strategic alliances in China, we test and find general support for these arguments. The results provide significant theoretical implications for a variety of research streams, as well as managerial implications for strategic alliances with Chinese firms.

Devil or Angel?

While new product evaluation testing plays a pivotal role in the NPD process, there is little empirical evidence on the influence of the virtual testing environment on the evaluation results and the data quality. The present study addresses this gap in the literature by using a split-sample online concept testinglike study to compare the testing results in traditional and virtual environments five heterogeneous innovations. The findings indicate that both traditional and virtual testing environments yield identical mean scores, while the latter provides higher-quality data given the same sampling design. Early concept or product tests, therefore, may be carried out in a more realistic testing environment using virtual techniques, which could substantially enhance the quality of testing data.

Information Use in New Product Development: An Initial Exploratory Empirical Investigation in the Chemical Industry*

In-depth interviews with product developers and product development software providers in a previous qualitative phase of research uncovered eight general types of information that are used across the new product development process (strategic, project management, financial, market and customer, wants and needs, technical, competitor, and regulatory information) and three general approaches to managing information in the process (project-centric, functionally oriented, and fully distributed). This paper presents a second phase of research trying to understand the role that managing knowledge and information plays in developing new products and achieving NPD success. This research phase empirically investigates use of the eight types of information across three general phases of the NPD process in the chemical industry using 81 mail survey responses from marketing and new product development professionals. Respondents were asked to indicate the degree to which each of the eight information types was used in each of the following general phases of new product development: the fuzzy front end, development, and testing and launch. The respondents also provided information on new product development success, information management system sophistication, and innovation strategy. This research makes several contributions to new knowledge. First, this research suggests that information management in product development is even more complex than initially posited in Zahay et al. (2004), with each of the eight types of information identified being used in each of the three phases of development. Unexpectedly, for all but one type of information use is higher in later stages of the NPD process, even though use of several kinds of information early in the project is associated with increased success. Thus, managers may need to encourage teams to start gathering information from outside the firm earlier than is currently the norm. Second, the results suggest that more sophisticated information management systems are indeed associated with increased use of various different types of information, as expected. Third, more sophisticated information management systems are more highly associated with success than less sophisticated information management systems. These results are important, as most new product development information management systems are limited in their ability to handle complex and non-quantitative information such as customer wants and needs, as well as strategic, competitor, and regulatory information. However, being able to transmit information on these issues is associated with increased firm performance and project success from these data. Thus, firms need to figure out how to improve their ability to manage and use non-quantitative information more effectively.

Factors influencing NPD process type: analysis of leading Croatian enterprises

Transfer of know-how, such as advanced business practices, may be as important for successful performance of companies as transfer of technology. This paper focuses on adoption of new product development process (NPD process for short), the business practice used for improving innovation development. This paper offers insights into what drives companies to adopt various NPD type processes and it does so by considering several NPD process antecedents and examining their impact on the choice of the NPD process type. The factors that this study considers are firm size, ownership structure, competitive intensity, percent of income derived from new products, importance of product/market characteristics, business function importance and need for business function improvement. This study aims to find which of these factors are significant in relation to NPD process type and seeks to explain why. The paper attempts to link factors influencing NPD process type adoption to specific characteristics of Croatian transition context. The paper shows that expressed need for improvement of business functions is significantly related to NPD process type. The study also shows that those companies that find speed to market, product novelty and large product variety important for their new product success are more likely to have adopted NPD process.

'Newness to the firm'-variables in the NPD process of technology companies

The factors affecting the success of new products in successful and unsuccessful NPD projects have been under review by many researchers. Do the managerial conceptualisations and perceptions vary regarding the so-called newness variables between successful and unsuccessful NPD projects in the technology companies? This question has not been tackled in the prior research. This research tries to deal with this deficiency. The findings indicate that there is equivalence in how managers conceptualise the newness variables in successful and unsuccessful NPD projects. Newness is not however, a unidimensional construct in Finnish technology companies as it has been claimed in the prior research. There appears to be differences in the managerial perceptions regarding newness variables in successful and unsuccessful NPD projects. Also, some newness variables appear to have an impact on the outcome of the successful NPD project, but there are none in the unsuccessful NPD projects. The limitations and future researc...

THE IMPACT OF MARKET ORIENTATION ON CUSTOMER KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPMENT AND NPD SUCCESS

The ability to develop and understand customer new product preferences in response to changing market trends is shown to be as a key to new product success. Given the significance of developing customer preferences and the increasing use of cross-functional new product teams in the NPD process, the authors examine how customer knowledge development is affected by characteristics of cross-functional new product teams in a market-oriented organizational context. On the basis of a study of 228 new product project managers in the R&D or marketing area, the authors find that customer knowledge development is positively influenced by customer orientation, competitor orientation, and cross-functional integration. Interestingly, lead users' involvement has a positive quadratic effect on customer knowledge development in terms of marketing respondents. However, cross-functional integration weakens the positive effects of both customer orientation and competitor orientation on customer knowledge development. Our results also reveal a clear R&D–marketing split on the main effect of the proposed antecedents.

CONTRIBUTION AND PARTICIPATION IN INNOVATION COMMUNITIES: A CLASSIFICATION OF INCENTIVES AND MOTIVES

Online communities (OCs) have become an important source for identifying the needs and problems of users, supporting companies in innovation. This development was fostered by IT/Internet technologies and has also been strengthened through recent social changes in user behavior within "Web 2.0." In contrast to its growing relevance, user innovation activities within OCs are still underexplored. Companies that wish to successfully utilize and integrate innovative OC members into their NPD process need a better understanding of the drivers and changes of user motivation in such communities. In this paper we analyze, categorize and integrate different motivational factors that play a major role here and develop several propositions concerning motivation within innovation communities.

Accelerating the fuzzy front-end of NPD projects: methods and management

In rapidly changing competitive conditions, firms competing on the basis of their new products need to be proficient in accelerating their product development programmes. Several research studies have suggested that the entire NPD process can be improved. In this paper, however, we focus on the 'upfront' or 'fuzzy front-end' (FFE) phase. We review several studies which reveal useful insights into speeding the FFE. Next, we examine the benefits of accelerating the FFE as well as the challenges encountered. We then advance several approaches for speeding the FFE. If firms excel in managing and accelerating their FFE activities, it offers firms the opportunity to more rapidly develop and commercialise their new products. A major goal of our paper is to examine the importance of streamlining the FFE as well as to suggest various methods for accelerating this critical phase of the innovation process.

신제품 개발 프로세스에 대한 기획 역량이 신제품 개발성과에 미치는 영향

Abstract The aim of the study is to look at the impact of 'NPD process planning proficiency' on NPD performance. In particular, the current study examines this effect at firm's level (NPD program), rather than at the level of individual project. This study investigate the impact of process planning proficiency considering other NPD proficiencies (i.e. marketing and technical proficiency). In addition to the main effect of process planning proficiency, the current study investigates the interaction effect between process planning proficiency and marketing proficiency (or technical proficiency). Based on a cross-industry sample of 103 Korean manufacturers, this study examines the impact of NPD process planning proficiency on product family performance. The current study focuses on platform projects which play a critical role on product family's successes. NPD process planning proficiency has significant impact on both NPD technical and commercial performance. Technical proficiency is not directly associated with NPD performance. However, this study finds the interaction effects of technical proficiency with process planning proficiency on NPD performance. Key Words : New product development proficiency, Process planning proficiency, Marketing proficiency, Technical proficiency.

Supplier involvement and customer involvement effect on new product development success in the financial service industry

This research investigates the relationship between customer involvement, supplier involvement, cross-functional department integration, and new product development (NDP) in the financial services industry. A survey tool was constructed and pre-tested. A total of 125 effective questionnaires distributed to financial services firms in Taiwan were returned. We found that customer involvement has a significant positive effect on the NPD process and on cross-functional integration, whereas cross-functional integration has a significant positive effect on the NPD process.

Knowledge‐oriented process portal with BPM approach to leverage NPD management

AbstractNew product development (NPD) processes can be improved through change projects managed in a context of business process management (BPM). In order to fully characterize and implement NPD process change projects it is necessary to be able to identify and adequately describe “to‐be” processes. These “to‐be” processes should be based on best practices, which can be structured into NPD reference models and body of knowledge (BOK). Despite the availability of NPD BOKs today, they are not easily applicable to process improvement, since they are published in on‐ and off‐line guidelines that are unsuitable for dynamic updating by a collaborative network such as a community of practice (CoP). A proposal is therefore put forward for the collaborative systematization of best practices through a two‐level portal external and internal to an organization, enabling users to participate in creating generic and public NPD reference models and BOKs. The proposal allows for the selection of a specific reference model and an existing BOK as required. This paper presents the main concepts underlying the proposal and its methodology, which focuses on agile project management (APM). It also describes the portal vision and the main deliverables of this research, with emphasis on the concept of the knowledge‐oriented process (KOP) portal. Three prototypes based on this concept are shown, which represent the evolutionary development of the KOP portal. Finally, the main results of the application are presented and discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The effects of market orientation on customer knowledge development: comparison of R&D and marketing

The ability to understand and develop customer new product preferences in response to changing market trends is shown as a key to new product success. Given the significance of developing customer preferences and the increasing use of cross-functional teams in NPD process, this study examine how customer knowledge development is affected by characteristics of cross-functional teams in a market-orientated organizational context. On the basis of a study of 228 new product project managers who are either R&D or marketing specialties, the results indicated that customer knowledge development has positive effects on customer orientation, competitor orientation, and cross-functional integration. Inter2 estingly, lead users' involvement has a positive quadratic effect on customer knowledge development in terms of marketing respondents. However, cross-functional integration weakens the positive effects of both customer orientation and competitor orientation on customer knowledge development. Our results also reveal a clear R&D-marketing split on the main effect of the proposed antecedents