NPD Projects Research Articles

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.

The impact of NPD projects on supply chain complexity: an empirical research

Supply chain managers redesign their supply chain as a response to the introduction of new products. In highly innovative contexts, this ability is critical to ensure the success of the innovations on the market. However, little is known about what supply chains areas are more impacted by innovation, and therefore what actions supply chain managers should take, and how new product developers should define project portfolio sustainable by the supply chain. This paper sheds light on this issue. A case study methodology has been used to measure what are the main changes that a supply chain undergoes when an innovation is introduced. The results show that deeper innovations results in increasing complexity of the supply side, i.e. the number of suppliers, the reciprocal dependency between client and supplier, the types of orders and the relationship with traditional suppliers, and of the distribution side, i.e. the number and types of distributors.

Survey of Major Methods for Handling Complexity in NPD Projects

Survey of Major Methods for Handling Complexity in NPD Projects

Continuous innovative practises and operational performance

Most contributions in the fields of strategic management, operations strategy, organisation and innovation theory, do not provide knowledge on how to pursue the combination of exploration and exploitation excellence. This paper investigates the impact of change initiatives in high performance companies, and the effects of organisational formalisation and centralisation on the time and timeliness performance of new product development projects. We analyse data collected through two multinational surveys of manufacturing companies and case studies of two manufacturing companies. The findings indicate that companies with a high degree of improvement in exploitation and exploration performance differ from low performers in terms of the width and depth of the implementation of improvement activities. Furthermore, high performers are actively aware of configurational effects. Formalisation does not only lead to a longer lead-time of radical innovation but also, contrary to what theory suggests, of incremental innovations. Centralisation only affects the timeliness of NPD projects.

NPD project timeliness: the project-level impact of early engineering effort and customer involvement

Few survey-based NPD studies focus methodologically at the project level. In this study we concentrate on the project level and examine two types of acceleration practices in new product development, customer involvement and early engineering effort and the impact of each factor on project timeliness. The data consist of actual accounting information from 62 product development projects at four design centres of a plastic printing corporation. The results suggest that both early engineering effort and customer involvement had a positive effect on project timeliness. In addition, these two factors were found to be negatively correlated such that, for any particular project, one or the other was utilised but rarely both.

RETRACTED: The relationship between brokers’ influence, strength of ties and NPD project outcomes in innovation-driven horizontal networks

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).This article has been retracted at the request of the co-Editor-in-Chief. The retraction has been agreed due to data reporting irregularities, following an investigation conducted by the Journal.We apologize that this was not detected during the submission and review process.

Integrating Suppliers into New Product Development

OVERVIEW:New product development is becoming increasingly risky, expensive and reliant on disparate knowledge bases spread across multiple firms. Many organizations are devolving design responsibility to their suppliers in order to meet these challenges, yet may lack appropriate knowledge of “best practice” in managing supplier integration. For example, how to adjust their management practices to the timing of supplier integration and the degree of design responsibility award to suppliers. A survey of 134 global industrial organizations, and their efforts to integrate suppliers into their new product development processes, shows that early assessment of supplier capabilities and setting joint technology goals can improve the effectiveness of NPD project teams, and lead to improved product design and financial outcomes for the firm.

Organizational memory influences new product success

Prior research on the impact of organizational memory on new product success has divergent perspectives. Such inconsistency has accrued mainly from not considering memory's multifaceted aspects, which interact with specific project characteristics. This paper tries to sort out this paradox by proposing that project innovativeness moderates the relationship among variables of organizational memory and new product success. An empirical study of 169 NPD projects of Korean manufacturing firms finds that memory sharing and the use of external information and formal procedures enhance new product success, whereas organizational memory has no effect. Project innovativeness is found to moderate memory's effect, despite some tradeoffs. As innovativeness increases, the effect of organizational memory and use of external information become stronger whereas the effect of memory sharing and use of formal procedures weaken. This suggests that firms must activate organizational memory more carefully according to project characteristics and the memory level to maximize its positive effects.

Team stressors, management support, and project and process outcomes in new product development projects

Stress is an important research area in the group and organizational behavior literature, yet it is underestimated in the new product development scholarship. In particular, the impact of team stressors on project and process outcomes was not empirically investigated in NPD project teams. In this study, we test the influence of team stressors, consisting of team crisis and anxiety, on the project/process outcomes, such as team learning, speed-to-market, new product success and proficiently executing the each stage of product development process, including the degree of management support during the project. By investigating 96 NPD projects, we found that when a high degree of management support is seen during the project, team crisis positively influences team learning, speed-to-market and new product success, and team anxiety positively impacts speed-to-market. Interestingly, when low management support was noted during the project, we were not able to find any statistical association between team crisis and anxiety, and project outcomes. Also, we found that when there was a high level of management support, team anxiety is positively related to the proficiency in executing the idea generation, market/technological assessment, product development, and product commercialization stages; and team crisis is positively related to the market/technological assessment, product development, product testing, and product commercialization stages. Further, we found that team anxiety influences the proficiency in the product development stage regardless of low or high level of management support. Next, managerial and theoretical implications were discussed.

Virtual Customer Integration in New Product Development in Industrial Markets: The QLL Framework

ABSTRACT Purpose. Customer integration in new product development has become a main topic in business-to-business literature. Literature has brought forward a growing body of virtual customer integration methods and tools. Yet, we lack a systematic evaluation of how and when to make use of conventional and virtual methods, and on what grounds. The purpose of this article is to provide a theoretically based classification of customer integration methods and tools, and selection criteria for industrial companies to find those most appropriate for their own innovation purposes. Methodology/Approach. In this article, we propose a new framework of customer integration that is receptive to the explicitness and tacitness of knowledge exchanged throughout the NPD process. We additionally introduce a third, qualitative axis in the QLL framework that encompasses criteria for selecting methods that best serve the knowledge transfer requirements of a particular NPD project. With this framework at hand, companies can find the most appropriate, individual selection of customer integration methods for them. A practical example is provided to illustrate the selection process. Findings. Our classification shows that virtual customer integration methods offer promising new tools for filling information gaps in the most sensitive stages of design and product testing. For complex, tacit knowledge exchange, close and face-to-face cooperation is more appropriate. Virtual methods appear more appropriate when visualization and time is important. Conventional methods outperform virtual ones when a shared understanding is vital. Originality/Value/Contribution of the paper. The contribution of this article is twofold. First, it contains a general classification of conventional and virtual methods for customer integration according to their contribution to the different forms of knowledge required throughout the stages of new product development processes. Second, the article shows how the classification framework can be applied in practice.

Balancing Business Performance and Knowledge Performance of New Product Development: Lessons from ITS Industry

New product performance (NPD) has a critical impact on a company's profitability and thus on its long-term survival. This study identifies two important dimensions of new product performance: business performance and knowledge performance. The business performance of a new product in the market can be regarded as the outcome of exploitative NPD activity, while knowledge performance, the degree of new knowledge creation, can be seen as the outcome of NPD exploratory activity. While recent studies have suggested the importance of organizational ambidexterity in terms of exploration and exploitation, few have investigated its determinants at the product-level. This study addresses this issue, focusing on controllable factors in NPD, through an empirical examination of sixty NPD projects in the information and telecommunications service industry. We find that while product quality contributes to business performance, organizational support and NPD marketing and technical proficiency contribute to performance in both dimensions. The trade-off relationship between the two is illustrated by the level of NPD technical challenge, which has a negative effect on business performance but a positive effect on knowledge performance. Overall, our study shows that exploration can be compatible with exploitation in NPD. Based on the results, we derive managerial implications over various stages of an NPD project.

System dynamics approach for change management in new product development

PurposeNew product development (NPD) project is an organizational competitiveness strategic weapon. Yet, many NPDs projects fail due to the dynamic nature of critical success factors such as time, cost, quality, and scope. Scope and change management (CM) are crucial factors and have a direct bearing on the other three factors. Thus, there is a need for effective CM in NPD projects to sustain the competitiveness and focusing on scope. This study aims to examine this issue.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the principles of cybernetics and system dynamics (SD) methodology have been used in developing causal loop diagrams, flow diagrams, and the governing equations. The SD model thus developed has been used to analyze the factors such as change in scope due to the development of new technology.FindingsThe dynamic simulation of the SD model was carried out; the results indicate that effective knowledge management (KM) constitutes the main controlling factor that has a significant control over project dynamics. Accordingly, suggestions have been made to improve on the KM aspects in the manufacturing sector, based on which the model has been developed.Practical implicationsThe model developed in this research gives an in‐depth study of the influence of “change in scope” on competence loss, competence development, and competence absorption of the knowledge workers. The results lay special emphasis on efficient KM in the manufacturing sector. Accordingly, suggestions on KM implementation include the processes of knowledge creation, storage, distributions, validation, and application.Originality/valueThis paper is unique in the sense that it develops a model with in‐depth structures, which helps the strategic managers in better understanding of the dynamics of NPD when change in scope occurs.

"FUZZY FRONT END" PRACTICES IN INNOVATING JAPANESE COMPANIES

In this paper, we report on the results of a large-scale study about typical front-end-related innovation practices in 553 Japanese mechanical and electrical engineering companies. We explore typical activities concerning the generation and assessment of new product ideas, the reduction of technological as well as market uncertainty and front end planning. Finally, we report on the differences between successful and unsuccessful companies. Our study confirms earlier findings about the frequent use of creativity techniques in Japan during the process of idea generation. We also find companies to be intensively involved in upper management and customers on NPD projects. While integrating upper management is of vital importance for assessing new product ideas, integrating customers and users is primarily used to developing product ideas and concepts. We further find evidence that successful companies integrate their customers more frequently in the process of developing and assessing new product ideas than non-successful companies. In addition, the former integrate customer requirements into their product definitions more often and also translate these requirements into technical specifications more frequently than non-successful companies. Finally, successful companies more often systematically plan a project prior to its start than unsuccessful ones.

Co-locating NPD? The need for combining project focus and organizational integration

Most studies of new product development practices focus on comparisons of individual projects, to identify factors contributing to their success or failure. This paper builds on an in-depth field study of the interaction of one single NPD project with the organizational context of the firm. The project typified many recommended practices for new-design projects: a co-located, cross-functional project team, close collaboration with external system suppliers, a hard-driving project manager and strong top management support. However, when evaluated in their organizational context as to their consequences for other on-going projects, these attributes turned out to have a deeply ambivalent character. By combining results from the case study and evidence from the literature several implications for NPD-organizing are suggested: the value of alternating co-location and physical separation according to the requirements of specific project phases; to take project duration into account in location decisions; and to address both interaction within the project and mechanisms for its interaction and integration with other departments and projects.

The influence of project autonomy on project success

In this article, we address the following research questions: (1) What is project autonomy, how can it be measured, and how much autonomy is given in NPD projects? (2) Does project autonomy increase with project innovativeness? (3) Is project autonomy positively related to success of NPD projects? (4) Does the positive relationship between project autonomy and project success increase with innovativeness of NDP projects? Theses hypotheses are tested using a sample of 104 highly innovative NPD projects, gathered in the first wave of the research project INNOVATION COMPASS. The results show that instruments which are advocated in the mainstream innovation and venture management literature are more frequently used with increasing innovativeness. However, they do not increase success of NPD projects, even not for highly innovative ones. Instruments derived from the organizational behavior tradition are not used more often with increasing innovativeness, but they do significantly improve NPD project success, particularly for very innovative ones. We conclude: Firms should not easily follow fashions, which are derived from prominent case studies. Rather, they should also take into account possible negative consequences of the recommendations. Researchers should lay more stress in discussing and empirically analyzing negative effects of popular recommendations.

Learning from collaborative new product development projects

PurposeIn an empirical study learning opportunities were identified. Learning opportunities are enablers or disablers for the achievement of shared understanding.Design/methodology/approachActors were interviewed about their communication process. The learning history method was used to analyze and structure the data. From the learning histories learning opportunities were derived. Finally, the learning opportunities were categorized.FindingsLearning opportunities were found on three levels: the actor, project and company level. They were also joined in six themes. Combining these two patterns showed that learning opportunities are interrelated.Research limitations/implicationsThe case study done was retrospective for the actors involved. Therefore, only conclusions could be drawn on the achievement of shared understanding. To be able to say more about the creation of shared understanding, following a NPD project real time would be desirable, in future research.Practical implicationsThis study shows the importance for managers of looking across boundaries. Only solving problems integrally within the organization will help to solve problems successfully. Knowing the learning opportunities of a NPD project finished, will help them to improve future projects. The explicit use of storytelling during a NPD project may help to create a learning organization with shared understanding between the actors.Originality/valuePrevious research showed, shared understanding is important, to be able to manage the integration of different knowledge domains. However, these studies do not describe learning opportunities for the achievement of shared understanding, which was done in this study.

Benchmarking Best NPD Practices—II

OVERVIEW:Translation of strategy into new product initiatives is the focus of this second of three articles reporting the results of the most recent American Productivity and Quality Center study on performance and best practices in new product development. Having a new product strategy for your business is clearly linked to positive performance, and the article outlines what the elements or components of a best-in-class innovation strategy are, and their relative impacts. Strategy ultimately must be reflected in spending decisions; best-performing businesses undertake a higher proportion of more innovative NPD projects, while the worst performers have a timid NPD project portfolio. There is also strong evidence that a formal portfolio management approach improves NPD performance overall. Finally, the issue of resources at the NPD team level is probed. Best performers were found to have far more resources available for NPD project teams, especially in non-technical areas, and to provide much sharper focus in the allocation of these resources.

UPSTREAM AND DIRECT INFLUENCES ON NEW PRODUCT PERFORMANCE IN EUROPEAN HIGH-TECH INDUSTRIAL FIRMS

This paper examines three issues. First, do multiple possible paths to high versus low new product performance (NPP) occur among European, high-tech, industrial manufacturing firms? Second, what are the upstream influences on high NPP? For example, what background factors affect the levels of the KSFs? Third, do consistent country-level differences occur among Austrian, German, and Swedish executives in their evaluations of antecedents and high-tech NPP? To probe these issues, a total of 771 chief operating officers and project managers participated in face-to-face long interviews (McCracken, 1988) covering 241 less and 264 more successful than average industrial NPD projects. The empirical findings support the propositions that: (1) multiple paths lead to high versus low NPP; (2) unique antecedent variables affect the KSFs for high NPP; and (3) for several upstream and direct influences, consistent national differences occur among executives’ assessments of NPP. A key implication of the study for NPD executives is to recognize the possibility of alternative paths leading to successful NPD.

Time-to-market vs. time-to-delivery: Managing speed in Engineering, Procurement and Construction projects

The time-to-market in NPD projects is a key factor in the competition between innovative firms. Research on concurrent engineering has shown that time can be managed as well as a delay and as a speed. Our concern in this paper is to study the time factor in the case of Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) projects, where a customer initially contracts for a project from a contractor on the basis of specifications, budget and delay. Is time-to-delivery a key factor? Does its reduction represent a competitive advantage for the client and/or for the contractor in EPC projects? Is project speed a key variable to be managed, or does it result from other project parameters? We first define an analytical model to characterize a speed profile in EPC projects. We implement this model for six major construction projects developed by a large, international firm. A variety of speed profiles result. We conclude by showing the relevance of NPD project speed management in EPC projects.

Sources and assessment of complexity in NPD projects

When examining the reasons why NPD projects are late, over budget, or why they suffer from performance problems, complexity is often directly linked to the results achieved. While some research has been done in the complexity area, more research is needed to assess the role that complexity plays in the successful development of new products. In this paper complexity is defined and several reasons are examined why this factor can be a significant issue in successfully managing NPD efforts. Several sources of complexity are also examined including technological; market; development; marketing; organizational; and intraorganizational complexity, i.e., one company partnering with another to develop a new product or technology. A template is then constructed to help product developers evaluate complexity in their development projects. Finally, the paper concludes with suggestions of how the complexity template can be applied by development managers and their teams.