Customizing practices based on the frequency of problems in new product development process (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
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.
Reducing Cycle Time in the New Product Development Process: A Best Practices Investigation
To sustain growth, a firm must continually redefine current products as well as introduce new ones in advance of a market need. By generating and implementing new product ideas faster than its competition, a firm is likely to increase its current market share or even establish a new market. The question, then, is not whether a company should innovate, but how to reduce innovation cycle time. This study illustrates the importance of improving and shortening the new product development process. The companies responding to the study indicate that 41 percent of the sales growth expected over the next five years will come from new products introduced during that period. Not surprisingly, companies expect to increase the number of their new product introductions over the same time period. By
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.
Engineering and Design Best Practices in New Product Development: an Empirical Research
Procedia CIRP, 2014
Nowadays companies are subject to pressuring and challenging calls for innovation. New Product Development (NPD) becomes a crucial function for competitiveness, survival and prosperity. In order to deliver products successfully, companies can choose between a vast amount of best practices to apply in their innovation processes. This paper proposes a classification framework of prevalent NPD best practices obtained through literature investigation and focus groups with experts. Moreover, this study presents a research conducted in 2012 and 2013 across 103 companies based in Italy, with the aim to understand the level of implementation of the proposed framework of NPD best practices. Finally, starting from the analysis of the collected data, the paper contributes to the ongoing debate about the contingency of best practices: since one size doesn't fit all, is it correct to talk about best practices in general or should we start considering them context dependent? Data demonstrates that moving research towards this direction makes definitely sense.
Implementing the new product development process
Technovation, 1997
Much discussion in the new product development (NPD) literature is concerned with describing blueprints for more effective systems for managing the process. Features of the emergent pattern of good practice in NPD include cross-functional team working, early involvement, effective project management arrangements and learning systems. However, there is relatively little in the literature on the implementation question; how a particular organisation can articulate and embed the necessary behaviour patterns and accompanying structures and processes needed to make good-practice NPD work for them. This paper reports on a case study of an electronics firm designing and implementing a new NPD system. In particular, it emphasises the organisational development processes required to implement and develop ownership of the system. The paper concludes with some comments on transferring this approach to other organisations, and on research issues arising from the experience. © 1997
Managing the new product development process: Strategic imperatives
Academy of Management Perspectives, 1998
For many industries, new product development is now the single most important factor driving firm success or failure. The emphasis on new products has spurred researchers from strategic management, engineering, marketing, and other disciplines to study the new product development process. Most conclude that in order to be successful at new product development, a firm must simultaneously meet two critical objectives: maximizing the fit with customer needs, and minimizing time to market. While these objectives often pose conflicting demands on the firm, there is a growing body of evidence that the firm may employ strategies to successfully meet these objectives. Successful firms are those that articulate their strategic intent and map their R&D portfolio to find a fit between their new product development goals and their current resources and competencies. Their success also rests on how well the technology areas they enter contribute to the long term direction of the firm by helping them build new core capabilities critical to the firm's long term goals. Strategic alliances to obtain enabling technologies may shorten the development process, but partners must be chosen and monitored carefully. When firms are choosing technologies to acquire externally, they must assess the importance of the learning that would be accrued through internal development of the project, and its impact on the firm's future success. Other imperatives include using a parallel (rather than sequential) development process to both reduce cycle time and to better incorporate customer and supplier requirements in the product and process design, and using executive champions to ensure that projects gain the resources and organizational commitment necessary to their completion.
PDMA research on new product development practices: Updating trends and benchmarking best practices
Journal of Product Innovation Management, 1997
Product development professionals may have the feeling that yet another buzzword or magic bullet always lurks just around the corner. However, researchers have devoted considerable effort to helping practioners determine which tools, techniques, and methods really do offer a competitive edge. Starting 30 years ago, research efforts have aimed at understanding NPD practices and identifying those which are deemed "best practices." During the past five years, pursuit of this goal has produced numerous privately available reports and two research efforts sponsored by the PDMA.
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.