Firms are increasingly involving suppliers in new product development (NPD) and one reason for this is to access technological knowledge. Previous research argues that purchasing fulfils an important role in involving the suppliers in NPD. However, purchasing’s role under technological uncertainty has not been investigated in detail. The purpose of this paper is to explore purchasing’s role in ...

We present an exploratory investigation of how managers conceptualize and perceive ‘marketplace’ variables in successful and unsuccessful New Product Development (NPD) projects, and explore the role that marketplace variables play in differentiating between successful and unsuccessful NPD outcomes. Limitations and future research directions are also discussed. Our findings indicate that manager...

In many instances, customers are seen as one of the key resources for new product development (NPD), as they often have deep product knowledge as well as experience and creativity potential gained by regular product usage. From knowledge management perspective, customers’ input to NPD is manifested in different forms of knowledge. Customers’ input to NPD typically reflects their needs and desir...

Purpose – The “fuzzy front end” of new product development (NPD) is characterized by considerable uncertainty and ambiguity, but detailed studies of ambiguity specifically related to NPD are missing. This paper aims to establish a classification of ambiguity in NPD processes. Design/methodology/approach – The authors’ research design is a holistic multiple-case-study design with the NPD project...

New product development (NPD) is essential for large, as well small and medium, enterprises (SMEs). Despite its importance the economy, challenges remain in NPD SMEs. Product success related with process, so it important SMEs to be able design their process. This paper aims identify SME’s research topics, characteristics of process SMEs, aspects considered design. The literature review done ana...

The research reported in this paper is aimed at developing knowledge on organizing NPD systems to optimize their contribution to performance. To this end, a systems approach to fit is used to explain the context-structure-performance relationships for NPD performance, specifically in terms of fit with market demands of the product concept and fit with time constraints of the development process...

Project portfolio management is a strategic weapon. Despite, the abundant amount of literature on research and development (R&D) project evaluation selection, earlier does not exploit potential learning even if it may generate significant opportunities. The aim this paper to deepen knowledge how process could favor selection projects include in portfolio, considering relevance orientation. ...

The changing competitive landscape has brought new forces to bear on the manner in which new products are developed. These forces have put the creation and dissemination of knowledge at the centre of many firms’ new product development (NPD) strategies. Organizational models to support NPD have evolved over the years and a significant aspect of this evolution has been the emergence of organizat...

Knowledge Management (KM) is a complex objective, especially in the instance of extended enterprises consisting of SMEs, and critical in new product design and development (NPD). The use of patterns is essential to get KM in collaborative NPD processes. This paper presents the use of patterns adopted in the CE-TILE project to standardize information and knowledge in collaborative work. The diff...