PDMA research on new product development practices: Updating trends and benchmarking best practices (original) (raw)
Related papers
Efforts continue to identify new product development (NPD) best practices. Examples of recognized studies include those by the Product Development and Management Association's Comparative Performance Assessment Study and the American Productivity Quality Center NPD best practices study. While these studies designate practices that distinguish top-performing companies, it is unclear whether NPD practitioners as a group (not just researchers) are knowledgeable about what represents a NPD best practice. The importance of this is that it offers insight into how NPD practitioners are translating potential NPD knowledge into actual NPD practice. In other words, are practitioners aware of and able to implement NPD best practices designated by noteworthy studies? The answer to this question ascertains a current state of the field toward understanding NPD best practice and the maturity level of various practices. Answering this question further contributes to our understanding of the diffusion of NPD best practices knowledge by NPD professionals, possibly identifying gaps between prescribed and actual practice. Beginning the empirical examination by conducting a Delphi methodology with 20 leading innovation researchers, the study examined the likely dimensions of NPD and corresponding definitions to validate the NPD practices framework originally proposed by Kahn, Barczak, and Moss. A survey was then conducted with practitioners from the United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland to gauge opinions about perceptions of the importance of different NPD dimensions, specific characteristics reflected by each of these dimensions, and the level of NPD practice maturity that these characteristics would represent. The study is therefore unique in that it relies on the opinions of NPD practitioners to see what they perceive as best practice versus prior studies where the researcher has identified and prescribed best practices. Results of the present study find that seven NPD dimensions are recommended, whereas the Kahn, Barczak, and Moss framework had suggested six dimensions. Among practitioners across the three country contexts, there is consensus on which dimensions are more important, providing evidence that NPD dimensions may be generalizable across Western contexts. Strategy was rated higher than any of the other dimensions followed by research, commercialization, and process. Project climate and metrics were perceived as the lowest in importance. The high weighting on strategy and low weighting on metrics and project climate reinforce previous best practice findings. Regarding the characteristics of each best practice dimension, practitioners appear able to distinguish what constitutes poor versus best practice, but consensus on distinguishing middle range practices are not as clear. The suggested implications of these findings are that managers should emphasize strategy when undertaking NPD efforts and consider the fit of their projects with this strategy. The results further imply that there are clearly some poor practices that managers should avoid and best practices to which managers should ascribe. For academics, the results strongly suggest a need to do a better job of diffusing NPD knowledge and research on best practices. Particular attention by academics to the issues of metrics, project climate, and company culture appears warranted.
An Examination of New Product Development Best Practice
Journal of Product Innovation Management, 2012
Comparative Performance Assessment Study and the American Productivity Quality Center (APQC) NPD Best Practices study. While these studies designate practices that distinguish top performing companies, it is unclear whether NPD practitioners as a group (not just researchers) are knowledgeable as to what represents a NPD best practice. The significance of this is that it offers insight into how NPD practitioners are translating potential NPD knowledge into actual NPD practice. In other words, are practitioners aware of and able to implement NPD best practices designated by noteworthy studies? The answer to this question can establish a current state of the field towards understanding NPD best practice and the maturity level of various practices. Answering this question further contributes to understanding the diffusion of NPD best practices knowledge among NPD professionals, possibly identifying gaps between prescribed and actual practice.
R&D Management, 2007
Given industry competitiveness, how do firms' new product development (NPD) process designs differ when responding to an innovation mandate? How do NPD design elements differ across firms when implementing NPD processes? These design elements are strategic business unit (SBU) senior management involvement, business case content, customer interactions, and cross-functional integration. What are the consequences of different combinations of NPD process design elements for innovation productivity? We explore these questions via a collective case study of newly implemented NPD process designs at three different SBUs of a major US-based international conglomerate, 1 year after receiving the mandate to grow through innovation. Our analysis suggests that industry competitiveness and firm characteristics influence the NPD process design as SBUs employ distinct combinations of NPD design elements. The differential emphasis on design elements leads to variation in process design and divergence in innovation productivity.
Determinants of New Product Development Team Performance: A Meta-analytic Review
New product development (NPD) has become a critical determinant of firm performance. There is a considerable body of research examining the factors that influence a firm's ability to successfully develop and introduce new products. Vital to this success is the creation and management of NPD teams. While the evidence for the use of NPD teams and the factors that determine their success is accumulating, there is still a lack of clarity on the team-level variables that are most impactful on NPD success. This meta-analytic study examines the effects of NPD team characteristics on three different measures of success: effectiveness (market success), efficiency (meeting budgets and schedules), and speedto-market, requiring incorporation of a broader set of team variables than previous studies in order to capture more factors explaining NPD outcomes. Unlike a typical empirical study that considered no more than two team variables to predict NPD performance, this study combines research spanning eight team variables including team input variables (team tenure, functional diversity, team ability, and team leadership) and team process variables (internal and external team communication, group cohesiveness, and goal clarity). Results from 38 studies were aggregated to estimate the meta-analytic effect sizes for each of the variables. Using the meta-analytic results, a path analytic model of NPD success was estimated to isolate the unique effects of team characteristics on NPD effectiveness and efficiency. Results indicate that team leadership, team ability, external communication, goal clarity, and group cohesiveness are the critical determinants of NPD team performance. NPD teams with considerable experience and led by a transformational leader are more successful at developing new products. Effective boundary spanning within and outside the organization and a shared understanding of project objectives are paramount to success. Group cohesiveness is also an important predictor of NPD outcomes confirming the importance of esprit de corps within the team. The findings provide product development managers with a blueprint for creating high-performance NPD teams.
Best Practices in New Product Development: Adoption Rates, Adoption Patterns, and Impact
Firms are experimenting with numerous different best practices in order to improve the timeliness and effectiveness of their new product development (NPD) process. This paper examines how widely adopted certain best practices are, if the adoptions show any pattern in terms of being simultaneously adopted within organizations, and what impact these best practices have on NPD performance. The main assumption of this study is that widely diffused best practices will lead to greater NPD effectiveness and more successful products. We developed an inventory of best practices related to NPD, and an empirical survey was administered to 39 companies. Our results indicate that best practices associated with enhancing the human resources involved in NPD, and improving the fuzzy front end of NPD appear to be getting little attention to date, despite a strong call for such attention in the management literature. Best practices associated with the strategic implementation of NPD (project selection, goals, technological leadership, product strategy, and customer involvement) are on average all more widely adopted than best practices associated with controlling the execution of NPD (process control, metrics, documentation, change control). In linking best practices with impact, our results indicate product success depends on developing strong product concepts and ensuring organizational focus on those concepts through project selection. Concurrency in project activities enhances both product and project success. Project success also depends on controlling the NPD process via project management, and ensuring team An organization with limited capital and personnel resources that can be devoted to improvement efforts must determine which best practices are most important to implement. The objective of this paper is to determine which best practices are being widely implemented, whether there are clusters of best practices that are being simultaneously implemented within organizations, and what the impact is of best practices on NPD product and project success. We examine adoption and diffusion within the organization indirectly by sampling development "programs" rather than individual projects. We measure the adoption of best practices across organizations, and their impact on performance via a cross-sectional survey. Even though there are numerous studies on NPD best practices, this study seeks to add value in three ways. First, most studies of NPD best practices focus at the level of the individual project; our study is one of the few to focus at the program level of the organization. Second, there have been no studies (outside SEI) concerning best practices associated with maturity, especially in the context of product (as opposed to software) development processes. This study is the first empirical study to see if the concept of maturity has any general meaning outside of the world of software development. Finally, our study seeks to identify patterns of best practice adoption within the organization. A review of previous research findings is presented, followed by our research propositions. We then describe our research method, and show subsequent empirical results.
Drivers of thoroughness of NPD tool use in small high-tech firms
This paper explores how thoroughly practitioners in small high-tech firms use tools in support of NPD activities. We present a mixed-methods study starting with a survey of 99 firms covering 76 tools across 12 functional perspectives on NPD, which shows wide variability in reported thoroughness of use. We investigate what drives this variability via 17 interviews. We find that the principal driver is institutional pressures that prioritise either rigorous process or pressure from targets. Based on these drivers and responses, we provide contingency-based advice as to how firms in different contexts can get the best results from using NPD tools.
2013
Effective interaction across organisational boundaries is a critical success factor in new product development (NPD). However, few studies have investigated how different mechanisms enable effective interaction across organisational and particularly hierarchical boundaries. This study explores how the formality of the NPD process influences the nature of interactions across different organisational boundaries and specifically identifies interaction mechanisms used across hierarchical boundaries. Cross-sectional interviews were conducted in nine firms. Findings highlight that in firms with a formalised NPD process, interactions tend to have a transactional/managerial bias. In contrast, in firms where the NPD process is flexible, interactions have a more social objective.
The need for combining project focus and …, 2005
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.