New products provide increased sales, profits, and competitive strength for most organizations. However, nearly 50% of the new products that are introduced each year fail. Organizations thus find themselves in a double bind. On the one hand they must innovate consistently to remain competitive, but on the other hand innovation is risky and expensive. Many organizations are forming business alliances to quicken the pace of and reduce risks associated with innovation. Yet by some estimates, 70% of these alliances fail. Many of the prescriptions for successful alliance management clash with recommendations for effective innovation management. The authors develop testable hypotheses by integrating the new products and alliance literature. A construct—cooperative competency—derived from related concepts of mutual adjustment, absorptive capacity, and relational capability is posited as the key factor affecting new product development success, regardless of whether it is an intra- or interfirm endeavor....

An Examination of Organizational Factors Influencing New Product Success in Internal and Alliance-Based Processes

Due to major structural changes in the service sector, many service managers are recognizing the need to continually develop new services that are timely and responsive to user needs. Thus, user input and involvement in new service development are an important area of inquiry. Although there has been a resurgence of academic and practitioner interest in new service development, there is a dearth of research on how users are involved in new service development. This study first combines insights from extant literature and exploratory interviews with practitioners to identify four key elements of user involvement, including objectives, stages, intensity, and modes of involvement, and then investigates these four elements in 12 service firms. Based on the findings, the author develops an inventory of activities that needs to be carried out in involving users in a new service development project.

An Exploratory Investigation of User Involvement in New Service Development

http://sgounaris.yolasite.com/resources/An%20Empirically%20Based%20Typology%20of%20Product%20Innovativeness%20For%20New%20Financial%20Services.pdf

An empirically‐based typology of product innovativeness for new financial services: Success and failure scenarios

We argue that effective management action is impeded by a simplistic understanding of time—one dominated by a clock-time perspective. Using the concept of improvisation, we reconcile two major time dichotomies associated with organizational phenomena: clock time versus event time and linear time versus cyclical time. We propose that improvisation offers a means for management theorists and practictioners to overcome these apparent time dichotomies.

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Time and Organizational Improvisation

Threats to new product manufacturability and the effects of development team integration processes

New Product Development, Research Takes the reader through the literature on research into the dynamics of new product development, considering and commenting on the variety of approaches reported in the literature, describing the plethora of “critical success factors” thrown up by the “generalist” studies in new product development to identify the recurring themes within the literature, and focusing on these prevalent research themes to explore the particular research interests within each. Finally, identifies gaps in the extant knowledge and points out areas for future research.

Angie Craig

Papers

Where to Now in New Product Development Research