Antecedents and Consequences of Knowledge Integration in Product Development. an Empirical Evidence

The purpose of this paper is to explain product development performance through the link between knowledge management and knowledge integration. When product development teams integrate knowledge about two external entities -customers and suppliers, they acquire a better understanding of the market and of each other’s needs and capabilities, which enables them to operate and innovate better than their competitors. In this context, our theoretical framework focuses on the social enablers usually associated to knowledge management, and combine them with knowledge integration as to determine product development performance. This performance is measured through two distinct components, or types of outcomes: (1) process outcomes, which analyze the effectiveness of the product development process and it is measured in terms of teamworkand (2) product outcomes, which concerns the characteristics associated with the value of the product to customer. A survey conducted with product development managers was used in order to develop and test our hypothesis that knowledge integration in combination with knowledge management has a positive impact on product development performance.