Understanding Emergent Processes within New Product Development Teams

A firm’s development of innovation in products and services are critical for sustaining a competitive advantage but new product development failure rate in various industries still remains relatively high. New processes emerge during product development due to the uncertainty of the requirements and the diversity of the product development team. Unstructured processes emerge through the social processes of the team. We propose a theoretical conceptualization of social processes within a New Product Development (NPD) virtual team which interact with existing decision processes and the organizational structure to influence the formation of emergent processes. Our paper can help firms develop policies that can better support product development teams. This can help reduce the failure rate of product development which in turn will help the firm sustain a competitive advantage.