NPD Projects Research Articles

Why project managers’ knowledge hiding is harmful to NPD projects: resilient team resource caravans as an explanatory mechanism

PurposeNew product development (NPD) projects are strategically important for firms’ operations but suffer from high failure rates. Leadership is a key factor for project success. However, in contrast to positive project leadership, project managers’ knowledge hiding has received little attention. Drawing on the input-mediator-output (IMO) framework and model of work team resilience, we explored the effect of project managers’ destructive knowledge hiding (i.e. evasive hiding and playing dumb) on project team performance (i.e. efficiency and effectiveness) and the serial indirect effect through team psychological safety and transactive memory systems.Design/methodology/approachWe conducted a time-lagged multiple-sourcing investigation of Chinese high-tech firms and tested the hypotheses using data collected from 105 NPD project teams.FindingsOur findings demonstrated that project managers’ knowledge hiding negatively affects NPD project team performance and indirectly negatively affects transactive memory systems through team psychological safety. Moreover, project managers’ knowledge hiding exerts a negative indirect effect on team performance through team psychological safety and transactive memory systems in serial.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature on operations management (OM) by broadening our understanding of the connection between project managers' destructive knowledge hiding and the failure of NPD projects. In providing such insight, it also offers practical guidance for overcoming team-level obstacles arising from project managers' knowledge hiding.

Tactical capabilities in agile NPD projects: insights from an autonomous car project in Sweden

Tactical capabilities in agile NPD projects: insights from an autonomous car project in Sweden

AHP-FMEA-DA multi-criteria method for NPD project launch analysis

AHP-FMEA-DA multi-criteria method for NPD project launch analysis

Applying Attachment Theory to Explain Boundary-spanning Behavior: The Role of Organizational Support Climate

Boundary spanning has been proven to have positive implications for innovation performance; yet, some individuals are less boundary-spanning than others. Drawing on the attachment theory and organizational support theory, this study develops a multi-level theoretical model to investigate how individuals’ attachment insecurity influences boundary-spanning behavior through self-efficacy and the moderating role of organizational support climate. To validate the proposed model, we adopted a survey research, and collected data from NPD project teams in China. The results revealed that both insecure attachment styles were associated with lower levels of individual boundary-spanning behavior, and self-efficacy partially mediated these relationships. Moreover, organizational support climate played a moderating role in the relationship between attachment anxiety and boundary-spanning behavior. With a high level of support climate, the negative impact of attachment anxiety on boundary-spanning behavior was weakened. This elucidates the role of individual affective motivation and team shared perceptions in shaping individual externally focused behavior.

The mediating role of key supplier adaptability and involvement in the relationship between supplier relationship management and NPD project success

The mediating role of key supplier adaptability and involvement in the relationship between supplier relationship management and NPD project success

The inseparable two: Impact of prior success and failure on new product development project discontinuation

AbstractNew product development (NPD) is a risky and expensive endeavor. Therefore, discontinuing less promising NPD projects, based on their development trajectories, is very important, yet firms face challenges when deciding whether and when to discontinue NPD projects. This article examines how characteristics of a firm's prior success and failure experiences, such as the number of launched and discontinued past projects, their attributes (i.e., the codification and quality of the knowledge underlying these past projects), and their level of relatedness (i.e., similarity) to current projects, influence the risks of continuing and discontinuing NPD projects, thus impacting their future discontinuation decisions. We adopt a mixed method approach, where we formally model and empirically test the influence of prior experiences on future decision‐making. A formal model enables us to offer reasoning that considers the risks of continuing a project versus discontinuing that project as the basis for theoretical arguments for a set of proposed testable relationships. We then empirically test these relationships on 2938 new drug development projects of biopharma firms worldwide. We find that firms with a greater amount of success and failure experiences tend to discontinue less promising NPD projects sooner than firms with less success and failure experiences. Also, we find that while the attributes (particularly knowledge codification) of successful experiences predominantly helped firms decide on timely discontinuation, failure experiences influenced firms' decision on timely discontinuation only when the projects were closely related to their failure experiences.

The Effects of Affective Trust and Suspicion in New Product Development Projects

Relationships between functional specialists working on NPD projects can lack trust, resulting in poor communication, low levels of co-operation, and, in the extreme, the political sabotage of projects. We empirically test a hypothesized model of managerial perceptions of motives and intentions, negative project politics, and affect-based trust, as well as their effect on dysfunctional conflict and defensive behaviors, with their subsequent effect on collaboration and NPD project success. Data were from 184 projects from the technically trained manager perspective, and 145 projects were from the marketing manager perspective. We find that, despite all of the NPD process improvement and use of integration methods, NPD managerial level interactions are still fundamentally relationally-based, where the strongest effects on cross-functional managerial behavior are from perceptions of negative motives, leading to defensive behaviors and politics interfering with collaboration and NPD success. On a positive note, while evident affect-based trust leads to collaboration and NPD success, it is far more important for technically trained managers. The implications for top management lie in structuring organizational processes that are trust-rich, in order to avoid the opportunity for distrust and suspicion to arise.

Impact of knowledge management capabilities on new product development performance through mediating role of organizational agility and moderating role of business model innovation.

In several studies, knowledge is witnessed as one of the foundations of long-term competitive edge and is also a basic source of new product development (NDP) performance. The aim of this study is to investigate the role of knowledge management capabilities (KMC) in new product development performance with the mediating role of organizational agility. Additionally, this study also intends to examine the moderating role of business model innovation on the relationship of KMC with organizational agility. This study was conducted on the Chinese automobile sector, and the NPD project managers, supervisors, and engineers of the sector were respondents of this study. A survey questionnaire was used to collect the data from 201 respondents, and data were analyzed using the Smart PLS 3 software. The findings of this research, although limited to the automobile industries, indicate that knowledge sharing and knowledge application have significant and positive effects on the development of new products. Organizational agility significantly mediates the relationship of KMC with NPD. The results found that business model innovation has a significant moderating role in the relationship between KMC and organizational agility. Moreover, the results of this study will assist the managers in developing a modern competitive business environment by implicating KMC in the process of NPD. Lastly, organizations may improve the sustainability of their product and their overall performance by using organizational agility and modern ways of value delivery.

How COVID-19 Impacted The Tacit Knowledge and Social Interaction of Global NPD Project Teams

Overview: Multinational, technology-intensive companies routinely use globally distributed R&D teams, but COVID-19 represented an additional challenge. Lockdowns and home-office working severely limit human interaction and can impact the communication, social interaction, and knowledge sharing critical to successful R&D. Our study investigated how COVID-19 affected R&D processes at three global companies, using a project complexity perspective. Although R&D managers responsible for global projects are accustomed to the challenges of managing communications, the fact that teams were forced into home-office working made new product development more difficult in several ways. Ensuring that technical details are understood by all members of dispersed teams is crucial. Of particular note, and central to our findings, is the emphasis that R&D managers placed on maintaining a high level of social interaction in their teams, and special efforts were needed to keep interactions at a sufficient level to foster the generation and transfer of tacit knowledge. The findings have strong implications for the way that R&D project management is likely to be conducted in a post-COVID-19 world, and we demonstrate how the complexity framework we used can benefit managers in navigating this and other challenges.

A new fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making approach for risk assessment of competitors’ cooperation in new product development projects

PurposeThis study aims to identify and accurately assess the risk factors of competitors’ cooperation in the NPD project.Design/methodology/approachNew product development (NPD) is essential to the survival of companies and surpassing other competitors. A key prerequisite for the success of an NPD project is the timing of new product delivery to the market. The main challenge faced by many project managers is the delay in execution and completion phases due to the complex nature and uncertainty of these projects. Rival companies' cooperation reduces the time spent on an NPD project which is an excellent way to reduce the risk of losing the market, but it increases other risk factors.FindingsBased on the results, the security and confidentiality of innovation, the competitors attracting human resources and the company’s brand credibility factors were ranked higher than other factors and should be predicted and managed before cooperating with competitors.Originality/valueThis paper proposed a new model to assess risk factors in cooperation with rival companies in NPD projects. This model takes into account new parameters, for example, negative and positive risks, negative and positive passable risks and risk-based multi-objective optimization by ratio analysis plus full multiplicative form methodology for the rival companies cooperation in NPD projects. To evaluate the efficiency of the proposed model, a real case of the R&D unit of Iran Khodro Company was studied.

The Impact of a Central Functional Department for Innovation Management on Firms' NPD Performance

In this paper, we examine if and by which mechanisms the presence of a functional department for innovation management at the corporate level (IMD) impacts firms’ NPD performance. Drawing on the RBV and the notion of organizational structure as a venue for capability development, we propose that the presence of a central IMD helps the firm cultivate valuable capabilities that facilitate new product development. Distinguishing between execution-oriented and entrepreneurial roles of corporate functions, we extend this baseline argument and specify five capabilities that we expect to be influenced by IMD presence: three of them corresponding to the execution-oriented role of the IMD (project selection and evaluation, project implementation, project coordination), and two corresponding to the entrepreneurial role (innovation orientation, openness to external knowledge). We test the resulting mediation model based on survey data from a sample of 124 manufacturing and service firms using PLS-SEM. Our results demonstrate that IMD presence positively affects the firm’s capabilities for selecting, implementing, and coordinating NPD projects, but has no significant effect on innovation orientation and openness to external knowledge. By this, IMD presence benefits the firm’s NPD efficiency. Regarding NPD effectiveness, however, our results indicate that IMD presence might be a double-edged sword.

From trash to treasure: A checklist to identify high-potential NPD projects from previously rejected projects

Recent research suggests that by reviewing previously rejected projects in NPD portfolios, it is possible to identify lessons learnt and better manage and handle new projects. Therefore, we argue that there might be hidden treasures in previously rejected new product projects due to recent technology developments or changes in customer preferences. However, after a systematic literature review and interviews with managers we found that there were no suitable tools available for firms to re-assess previously rejected projects. Therefore, by employing multiple qualitative methodological techniques, this study enriches the Stage-Gate model and innovation literature by developing a checklist that firms can use to identify potentially successful new products (treasures) among previously rejected projects (trash). As such, the checklist in this study is not only helpful for reducing the sunk cost associated with previously rejected projects, but can also exploit their potential for success, and become the company's new growth engine.

Tactical capabilities in agile NPD projects: Insights from an autonomous car project in Sweden

Tactical capabilities in agile NPD projects: Insights from an autonomous car project in Sweden

From Normalization to Innovation in New Product Development Projects

Although tolerating failure has been regarded as an essential part of the innovation process, much less is known about how failure normalization can drive innovation. We argue that failure normalization facilitates innovation by encouraging learning from failure, which in turn, depends on entrepreneurial passion. Using data from collected a survey of 237 new product development project (NPD) leaders in high-tech ventures, we find that learning from failure acts as a mediator in the relationship between failure normalization and innovation performance in the NPD process. However, failure normalization only provides an opportunity to learn and whether actual learning from failures occurs depends on NPD project leaders’ entrepreneurial passion. Our results suggest that the path from failure normalization to innovation in NPD requires a much more nuanced examination of not only the mediating role of learning from failure but also entrepreneurial passion, which functions as a motivational on-off switch for learning from failure.

Organizational Structure, Subsystem Interaction Pattern, and Misalignments in Complex NPD Projects

Developing a complex new product requires the firm both to deconstruct that product into subsystems and to create an organizational structure aligned with the product architecture. However, empirical evidence indicates that misalignments do occur and are usually one of two general forms: a “hidden dependency,” which is a missing link between teams responsible for two interacting subsystems; or “spurious communications” between two teams that interact even though their respective subsystems are not linked. We model the product development process as a search on a rugged landscape and study how misalignments affect the performance of the process in both design quality and convergence time. We find that the effects are mediated by the organizational decision‐making structure, and also by the interaction pattern among product subsystems. For instance, with a modular design, a project with a hidden dependency yields higher quality design solutions than a project with spurious communications or an aligned project. However, hidden dependencies cause a longer convergence time. Further, in modular designs spurious communications do not impact quality or convergence time when compared with aligned projects. The effect in non‐modular product designs depends on the organizational decision‐making structure and managerial capability. When decisions are made in a centralized organization that employs a capable manager, spurious communications improve the design quality but could delay the convergence time. We trace the cause of these effects to errors committed by teams in rejecting superior designs, which make the search process more exploratory and covering a wider area of the search landscape.

Design processes for OBM firms in the NPD process

For production-oriented companies such as original brand manufacturers (OBMs), management of the NPD cycle is essential to how their business functions. However, because these companies focus on R&D activities, engineering and manufacturing goods, they often see design as a small fragment of their product development cycle rather than as an integral part of the process. This paper investigates current design processes, identifying how each process is run by different businesses. Literature reviews and in-depth interviews are undertaken with key NPD project personnel from OBM firms and international brands, to evaluate firms’ current problems operating the existing processes. The findings show an overview of how the design process is carried out by various functional groups in OBM consumer electronics companies and international brands respectively. It is anticipated that contributions to this research will guide OBM firms’ activities in each process of design, and help to improve managing overall design practices.

Project behaviour in different types of project management organisations: a system dynamics approach

Developing new products is a highly dynamic complex process. Managing such dynamic projects is not an easy task. In this research, different scenarios of NPD projects' work systems are examined. The capability of these projects' work systems to deal with the dynamic nature of NPD projects to mitigate the negative impacts of this nature on NPD project' performance. This study shows that, the most suitable organisational work environment for moderate and high complex projects is the highly flexible work system environment. While it is appropriate for low complex projects to provide a formal work system environment. This study tries to use systems dynamic modelling to model the work system characteristics and managerial styles in interaction with projects behaviour. It provides a step towards the understanding of how both work systems characteristics and managerial styles would influence projects performance and their probability of success. It serves as a guide for projects managers suggesting proper ways to better manage different NPD projects with different levels of complexities.

Project behaviour in different types of project management organisations: a system dynamics approach

Developing new products is a highly dynamic complex process. Managing such dynamic projects is not an easy task. In this research, different scenarios of NPD projects' work systems are examined. The capability of these projects' work systems to deal with the dynamic nature of NPD projects to mitigate the negative impacts of this nature on NPD project' performance. This study shows that, the most suitable organisational work environment for moderate and high complex projects is the highly flexible work system environment. While it is appropriate for low complex projects to provide a formal work system environment. This study tries to use systems dynamic modelling to model the work system characteristics and managerial styles in interaction with projects behaviour. It provides a step towards the understanding of how both work systems characteristics and managerial styles would influence projects performance and their probability of success. It serves as a guide for projects managers suggesting proper ways to better manage different NPD projects with different levels of complexities.

Organizational Structure, Subsystem Interaction Pattern, and Misalignments in Complex NPD Projects

Developing a complex new product requires the firm both to deconstruct that product into subsystems and to create an organizational structure aligned with the product architecture. However, empirical evidence indicates that misalignments do occur and are usually one of two general forms: a “hidden dependency”, which is a missing link between teams responsible for two interacting subsystems; or “spurious communications” between two teams that interact even though their respective subsystems are not linked. We model the product development process as a search on a rugged landscape and study how misalignments affect the performance of the process in both design quality and convergence time. We find that the effects are mediated by the organizational decision-making structure, and also by the interaction pattern among product subsystems. For instance, with a modular design, a project with hidden dependencies yields higher quality design solutions than a project with spurious communications or an aligned project. However, hidden dependencies cause a longer convergence time. Further, in modular designs spurious communications do not impact quality or convergence time when compared with aligned projects. The effect in non-modular product designs depends on the organizational decision-making structure and managerial capability. When decisions are made in a centralized organization that employs a capable manager, spurious communications improve the design quality but could delay the convergence time. We trace the cause of these effects to errors committed by teams in rejecting superior designs which make the search process more exploratory and covering a wider area of the search landscape.

Gerenciamento de riscos aplicado como estratégia corporativa para projetos de desenvolvimento de novos produtos na indústria química

Gerenciamento de projetos têm feito parte do cotidiano de muitas empresas em todo o mundo corporativo, e mais especificamente a gestão de riscos sendo considerada em projetos aplicados ao desenvolvimento de novos produtos na indústria química, onde a dinâmica para lançamento, faz considerar o triangulo de ferro do gerenciamento de projetos, como custo, tempo e qualidade, sendo necessário utilizar o gerenciamento de riscos como uma das áreas de conhecimento mais importantes para gerenciamento de projetos. Assim, o objetivo deste artigo está em realizar uma revisão sistemática de literatura, com foco principal em pesquisar e fundamentar como o gerenciamento de riscos, através da estratégia corporativa, vem contribuindo para o sucesso dos projetos para desenvolvimento de novos produtos na indústria química, incluindo métodos e ferramentas utilizados. Com os resultados obtidos nesta pesquisa através da revisão bibliográfica e possíveis lacunas identificadas, foi apresentado um parecer pela continuidade de pesquisa futura para a aplicabilidade do gerenciamento de risco junto ao processo de desenvolvimento de um novo produto na indústria química.