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Rapid changes in technology--including advances in augmented and artificial intelligence, machine learning, and mobile--are paving the way for significant changes not only in the channels through which education is delivered but in how education itself is structured. This article identifies eight ways in which education technology can change how learning is facilitated and who will facilitate that learning. Basic economic principles then provide a framework for thinking about how these changes will be embedded over time as education increasingly becomes a durable good providing increasing returns through network effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop and test an attention-based theory of search by top management teams and the influence on firm innovativeness. Using an in-depth field study of 61 publicly traded high-technology firms and their top executives, we find that the location selection and intensity of search independently and jointly influence new product introductions. We have three important findings. First, in contrast to the portrait of local managerial search, we find teams that select locations that contain novel, vivid, and salient information introduce more new products. Next, unlike information-gathering approaches that merely "satisfice," persistent search intensity may lead to increases in new product introductions. Finally, level of search intensity must fit the selected location of search to maximize new product introductions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among various methodologies for demand forecasting of new products, the random-coefficient discrete-choice model using stated preference data is considered to be effective because it reflects heterogeneity in consumer preference and enables the design of experiments in the absence of revealed preference data. Based on estimates drawn from consumer preference data by structural hierarchical Bayesian logit models, this study develops the overall, strategic, demand-side management for new products by combining market share simulation and a rigorous clustering methodology, the Gaussian mixture model. It then applies the process to the empirical case of electronic payment instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Front-end activities largely influence the outcomes of new product development processes, because it is here that firms create new ideas, give them direction, and set them in motion. We show that the front end can be understood as comprising three core activities: idea/concept development, idea/concept alignment, and idea/ concept legitimization, which allow firms to create corroborated product definitions. This article provides important implications for managers interested in front-end management. It devotes specific attention to the differences between incremental and radical front-end development and to the front end in the light of increasingly open innovation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The only way to achieve real growth is to develop offerings so innovative that they create new categories or subcategories making competitors irrelevant because they lack a "must have" feature or benefit-to win the brand relevance competition. The alternative, engaging in "my brand is better than your brand" brand preference competition, virtually never works because of market inertia. This article, based in part on hundreds of case studies, shows how to identify the "must haves" and discusses barriers to competitors such as going beyond functional benefits, finding shared interests with customers, ongoing innovation, superior execution, scaling the concept, becoming an exemplar, and branding the innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are persistent marketing effects most likely to appear right after the introduction of a product? The authors give an affirmative answer to this question by developing a model that explicitly reports how persistent and transient marketing effects evolve over time. The proposed model provides managers with a valuable tool to evaluate their allocation of marketing expenditures over time. An application of the model to many pharmaceutical products, estimated through (exact initial) Kalman filtering, indicates that both persistent and transient effects occur predominantly immediately after a brand's introduction. Subsequently, the size of the effects declines. The authors theoretically and empirically compare their methodology with methodology based on unit root testing and demonstrate that the need for unit root tests creates difficulties in applying conventional persistence modeling. The authors recommend that marketing models should either accommodate persistent effects that change over time or be applied to mature brands or limited time windows only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Involving customers in the development of new products and services helps firms understand customer needs, increasing the likelihood of meeting those needs and expectations. Although a large body of literature addresses the implications of customer involvement for project performance, the results of previous research are somewhat inconsistent. This paper explores this issue by examining the differing impact of customer involvement on the development of new products and new services. We propose that the role of customer involvement differs for these two types of innovations, with involvement in the early stages more important for products and involvement in the launch stage more important for services. Our results, based on a comprehensive dataset on customer involvement in innovation, are consistent with such a pattern, suggesting that more attention should be paid to the conditional benefits of customer involvement in different types of solution development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies in the literature have addressed the issue of outsourcing in relation to New Product Development (NPD) or R&D processes. However, the issue of how the outsourcing decisions in the NPD process are best undertaken by the firms has not been fully addressed. Understanding factors influencing the decision of innovation outsourcing more likely remains a need within the current research stream. As it stands, the existing literature takes account of neither a complete set of decision making dimensions, nor the specificity of the NPD process, especially when a disruptive technology fosters product innovation. Although these studies have analysed the antecedents of the innovation outsourcing, the decision-making dimensions are not considered in an integrated multidimensional decision-making model, that considers the inter-related effects of their contemporaneous consideration. There are, therefore, significant gaps in the literature, which this article intends to fill. Our study aims to understand how organisations approach outsourcing decisions relating to NPD activities in technology intensive industries, and the performance implications of these decisions. The context of the study is that of aircraft industry. Therefore, this article discusses the findings of an empirical research that explores an embedded and in-depth longitudinal case study, namely, the Boeing 787-8 programme (the first model of the B787 Dreamliner programme). This new aircraft is a disruptive technology product innovation within the industry because it adopts new material technologies that make it possible to meet future customer needs. The programme has radically changed the partnership model adopted in the industry's supply chain. The aim of the empirical research is to verify how the proposed model works to investigate outsourcing strategies related to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner programme. The research question that we aim to answer is: which strategic dimensions in a decision-making model are able to extensively and thoroughly address the outsourcing decisions relating to NPD activities given the hypothesis that a disruptive technology fosters product innovation? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fatores de sucesso no processo de desenvolvimento de produtos (PDP) em empresas de pequeno e médio porte (PMEs) do setor de equipamentos médico-hospitalares, do Estado de São Paulo, são identificados e analisados. Um modelo conceitual para explicar o relacionamento entre práticas de gestão do PDP e o desempenho dos novos produtos foi elaborado e testado. O modelo considera oito fatores: vantagem (ou diferenciação) do produto, habilidades de marketing, fontes de tecnologia, habilidades da empresa, habilidades do líder de projeto, integração funcional, organização da equipe de projeto e qualidade de execução do PDP. Uma pesquisa de levantamento (survey) foi realizada em 30 empresas desse setor, obtendo-se dados de 49 projetos de novos produtos. Os resultados apontam que a gestão do PDP, nessas empresas, deve atentar para ações que promovam as habilidades de marketing e a integração funcional durante o PDP e a qualidade na execução das atividades de pré-desenvolvimento, pois esses fatores, em relação aos demais, têm um impacto positivo relativamente maior no sucesso do novo produto.Critical success factors in new product development (NPD) in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the medical device industry are identified and analyzed. A conceptual model to explain the relationship between management practices and NPD performance was developed and tested. The model considers eight factors: product advantage, marketing skills, sources of technology, company skills, project leader skills, cross-functional integration, project teams' organization, and NPD proficiency. A survey was carried out in 30 companies in this industry collecting data from 49 new product projects. The results highlight the importance for this industry to emphasize activities related to marketing skills, cross-functional integration, and NPD proficiency since these factors have a positive influence on the new product success. Theoretical and managerial implications of the article are presented.

Since the 20th century, 90 years, the number of patent applications for intelligent industrial robots worldwide continues to grow rapidly,new technical items are emerging, related technology more and more attention by the world, related research and development is rapidly developing. Patent literature is a very important source of scientific and technological information, whether it is to apply for patents, declare the subject, or the development of new products, dealing with patent infringement disputes, are inseparable from the patent literature search. With the continuous development of network technology, patent search system after another. Ordinary users want to accurately select the database, fast, comprehensive and accurate access to the required patent information, need to master the scope of the respective database included and understand the advantages and disadvantages of each database. Intelligent industrial robots patent search platform in the field of patent data in the screening, cleaning, finishing, processing, to form a database of thematic patents. The patent database includes basic data, enhanced data and technical field data, and with the software platform to install the service to the local. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formal new product development (NPD) processes have become an important tool in NPD management. However, our understanding of what makes formal NPD process implementation successful in terms of acceptance and performance is still limited. This paper contributes to an improved understanding of factors affecting the acceptance and use of formal NPD processes. Our results show that acceptance of formal NPD processes is determined by several factors, such as ease of use, transparency of discourse, continuous improvement, involvement of NPD actors, and the ability to bridge differences in thinking. Furthermore, that acceptance of formal NPD processes affects NPD performance positively. These results draw on data from a survey posted to employees working for nine large manufacturers of commercial vehicles worldwide. The results should encourage managers to consider and enhance the factors affecting acceptance. This could be done through using new media for publication to increase transparency and perceived ease of use of the NPD process. Further acceptance of the formal NPD process is increased if it mirrors an operative reality and if organisational structures for improvement of the process are implemented and inclusive to employees involved in NPD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When confronted with new product development (NPD), managers generally adopt quick fixes such as benchmarking with competing products and then attempting incremental changes over the competitors' product features. There are several approaches propounded in the past. Some focus on manufacturing, some on marketing and perception, and some on idea generation and stage-gating these concepts. However, a comprehensive approach seems to be missing. This paper attempts to suggest a comprehensive framework that could be used for products as well as services, by start-ups and conglomerates alike, for processes as well as organization design. This study includes an analysis of existing literature on NPD and an exploratory activity to identify all possible attributes of a product or service. The exploratory study was conducted with multiple groups of participants. Each group was given a different product or a service for analysis. They were asked to brainstorm in a systematic manner and list down everything that they liked/disliked or had suggestions about the product or service that they were analyzing. A comprehensive master-list of these attributes was then created to form the framework. An exhaustive list of forty-five attributes was compiled. These attributes are representatives of the latent needs and aspirations of consumers and can be used as a starting point of any new product or service development/upgradation process. This framework is equally applicable for processes and organizational design as it is for products and services. It can be used by managers in large as well as small organizations. It can also be used by faculty in management schools who teach Innovation and NPD as also faculty in a design school. The proposed framework can be used while designing systems for community-building too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the pharmaceutical industry, value is being destroyed through longer product development times. Given that patent lives are (normally) fixed at 20 years, the double hit of increasing time to market is evident -- higher R&D costs and less time at market before generic competitors are able to be released into the marketplace. The Policy implications are massive: A huge and permanent shift away from internal R&D towards partnerships, licensing deals and acquisitions of more innovative biotechnology companies. In this study, we build a system dynamics model of the product development pipeline for a single company operating in the pharmaceutical market. The study shows that in the presence of loss of value due to longer lead times, it is more advantageous to: (a) work faster to reduce the backlog of projects; (b) increase the number of projects started whenever it is possible reduce complexity in the pipeline; and also (c) the optimal decision on resource allocation is independent of the loss of value due to longer lead times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impacts of over meeting customer demands on the product development process, which is on the basis of the quantitative model of customer demands, development cost and time. Then propose the corresponding product development optimization decision. Design/methodology/approach: First of all, investigate to obtain the customer demand information, and then quantify customer demands weights by using variation coefficient method. Secondly, analyses the relationship between customer demands and product development time and cost based on the quality function deployment and establish corresponding mathematical model. On this basis, put forward the concept of customer demand saturation and optimization decision method of product development, and then apply it in the notebook development process of a company. Finally, when customer demand is saturated, it also needs to prove the consistency of strengthening satisfies customer demands and high attention degree customer demands, and the stability of customer demand saturation under different parameters. Findings: The development cost and the time will rise sharply when over meeting the customer demand. On the basis of considering the customer demand saturation, the relationship between customer demand and development time cost is quantified and balanced. And also there is basically consistent between the sequence of meeting customer demands and customer demands survey results. Originality/value: The paper proposes a model of customer demand saturation. It proves the correctness and effectiveness on the product development decision method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of pharmaceuticals is an extraordinarily unique process. However, the aspects that are unique in comparison with other industries have never been clearly explained, either academically or practically. Clinical trials are an emblem of the uniqueness of pharmaceutical development; however, using industry-specific ideas and vocabulary do not enable cross-industry comparisons. This paper analyzes the product development process of pharmaceuticals using a problem-solving model that can be applied to comparisons across industries, and organizes the characteristics as well as effective management techniques. From the problem-solving perspective, the pharmaceutical development is unique because it requires the generation of numerous alternative solutions and complex testing. There exist products or industries that share one of these two characteristics, but only a few products or industries share both the characteristics. These characteristics closely relate to product development management of pharmaceuticals. In other words, considering the cost of product development, it is difficult to simultaneously create many alternatives and conduct complicated tests. Therefore, pharmaceutical companies focus on creating many alternatives in the upstream development process, and then testing in the downstream process, responding to this problem by balancing between the two characteristics and switching at the appropriate time. Determining the timing of this switch is one of the most important management techniques that impacts the performance of pharmaceutical development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Administração e Inovação (RAI) is the property of Revista de Administracao e Inovacao- RAI and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista de Administração e Inovação (RAI) is the property of Revista de Administracao e Inovacao- RAI and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Inertia reflects a firm's inability to change or innovate and may be fostered by many sources. Though researchers have focused on internal inertia factors, we examine inertia factors within a firm's customer base: switching costs, customer preference stability, and network externalities. New products at 279 firms are examined to assess the role of these demand-side inertia factors in determining innovativeness and, ultimately, financial performance. The inertia factors are hypothesized to have differential innovativeness effects for early and late entrants. Overall, demand-side factors affect innovativeness positively, contrasting with firm-based factors (e.g., routines or assets), which typically inhibit innovativeness. Consumer preference stability is the only factor negatively related to innovativeness, though only for early entrants. Network externalities and switching costs increase innovativeness (particularly for early entrants). Demand-side inertia factors are critical determinants of innovativeness and may now be placed within the previously internally focused set of factors engendering early mover advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a twelve-year case study, this article reports on the creation, structure, processes, and results of a major corporation's innovation board. A variety of front-end activities are described to show how the innovation board integrates its front-end activities with formal development processes. This research describes the formation of the innovation board, the "light touch" process developed for front-end projects, and the specialized roles that emerged to conduct early stage innovation. The institution of the board and its evolving practices changed leadership and culture in the organization; the board was reorganized over time to address new challenges. The case study offers a detailed description of the activities and evolution of the board. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview is presented with entrepreneur Eric Ries, author of the book "The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Business," on topics related to the concept of the "lean start-up" business enterprise. Topics include product design prototyping for the minimum viable product (MVP), innovation accounting and management in tracking organizational goals, and business models for innovation and entrepreneurship.

Organizational knowledge creation, as reflected in new product/service development, is a vital process for firms to master. Critical to the development of new products/services is the management of the front-end phase, which crucially determines the eventual fate of a new product/service idea. However, studies on how knowledge is created at the front-end of the new product development process are rare. This empirical paper addresses this gap by focusing on knowledge conceptualization - where new knowledge from its generation is crystallized into a concrete and explicit form. Employing a qualitative methodology, the paper examines ten discontinuous projects and develops a front-end knowledge conceptualization framework. The framework consists of the identified knowledge conceptualization stages and illuminates the pattern of overlaps, outcomes, contributors, knowledge, interactions and volatility across each stage. Our main contribution is a knowledge-based appreciation of the dynamic and interactive nature of the new product/service development's front-end phase in the context of discontinuous innovations, and thence the paper provides clear managerial learning points for the effective management of this phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is it necessary or even possible to apply the management technology of open innovation to all projects in the same way? An analysis of the practices used in different product development projects in the same European medical company shows that commercially successful projects did apply many of the best practices for open innovation. However, projects were not equally successful. The outcome seems to be highly influenced by the type of collaborative arrangements used and their application. In particular, the analysis indicates that organizational factors seem to be indicative but not sufficient for success, and some open innovation practices were more successful than others. The most open and exploratory practices were not so successful in this company. This might be due to the nature of innovation, which develops in unpredictable and nonlinear ways. These observations suggest that those involved in open innovation need both a broad knowledge of the various potential elements of an open innovation effort and a flexible attitude toward their application. INSET: Summary of Projects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A diversification of research approaches became apparent in the field of product development management in the 1990s, based on a monumental study by Clark and Fujimoto (1991) (the so-called "Harvard Study"). The following five new research approaches then came into play. The "product-industry based approach," sought to clarify effective product development management by focusing on the characteristics of products and industry. The "multi-project approach" analyzed multiple projects over single projects. The "dynamic approach" focused on the dynamic aspects of product development from the long-term perspective. The "problem-solving approach" regarded product development as a problem-solving process. The "organizational capability approach" sought to elucidate organizational capabilities that contribute to high performance in product development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Product development projects are exposed to a number of challenges, and the significance of different challenges differs among projects. To prepare for these challenges, project managers may benefit from assessing them at an early stage of the project. This paper presents a method that can be used to assess product development challenges in terms of technological and market uncertainty, product and production complexity, and geographical and organizational dispersion. Project managers can use the results from such assessments to justify preventive action, negotiate resources and specifications, and devise processes that fit the specific characteristics of individual development projects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The deployment of scientific approach to customers' voice by means of customer science to achieve a good product development process. This model means implementing Customer Kano Model for turning the design perception into a precise knowledge as more creative activities from the hidden knowledge of designing using statistical science. The model has been applied to product design process and the results obtained are shown. An application of Kano CAGE model has further given the option of customer centric evaluations and which leads to an optimum product development process. A concept is arrived at and importance is given to Kano model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers frequently question whether financial firms benefit by developing new products because barriers to entry common to other industries generally do not exist. Studies of early mover advantages for new financial products provide mixed evidence at best. We find evidence of early mover advantages in the relatively young market for long-term care insurance (LTCI) using data that allow broad testing of financial performance. Product differentiation, individual lines exposure, firm size, and traditional health insurance experience also affect financial performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents the exploration and application of a feature-based design methodology within mechanical product development cycles. Based on a review of the feature technology and previous research work, this paper focuses on the modeling of intricate relations among features of different design aspects. A concept of feature parameter map that leads to a constraint mapping method is proposed. Further, features are classified into different levels; and information management for product lifecycle support is considered. The application of this method is demonstrated with the conceptual design and optimization of a gearbox as the study case. In addition, an extended feature system for product development was explored. With a spreadsheet package and a computer aided design (CAD) tool, the product model generation, change management and final optimization of the case assembly including its bulk shape, have been achieved. Two important information chains were used to address the aspect of “design for post-manufacture services” with concurrent engineering consideration, i.e. a field installation pattern and a set of wrapping dimensions for product transport packaging. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of change management, a different product derivative model was regenerated by adopting and changing the values of a main conceptual feature. The result is promising. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Consumer preferences and information on product choice behavior can be of significant value in the development processes of innovative products. In this paper, product customization evaluation and selection model is introduced to support imprecision inherent of qualitative inputs from customers and designers in the decision making process. Focusing on customer utility generation, an optimum design selection approach based on fuzzy set decision-making is proposed, where design attributes priority is identified from customer preferences using an analytical hierarchy process. A multi-attribute analysis diagram is developed to visualize the preference of each attribute from the expert's group decision. Conjoint analysis is used in the product customization to focus on customer utility generation in terms of multiple criteria. The use of the decision-making method is illustrated with a case example that highlights the utility of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The articl presents a research study on the integration of chosen management standards into the organization by the Integrated Management System Role-Play Simulation (SIMPRO-IMS). The research methodology is based on standards innovation and integration management system application of International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It shows that positive results can be viewed after the first use of IMS role-play simulation in customer satisfaction and product improvement.

The extensive academic literature on innovation has long recognized product users as a potentially important source of ideas. Although prior work has primarily focused on understanding the unique motivations and knowledge that allow users to generate their own innovations, we extend existing theory to investigate the contribution of users to corporate invention. We draw on the knowledge-based view of the firm, evolutionary theory, and the user innovation literature to theorize that corporate inventions that integrate user knowledge will be of greater importance, contribute to a broader set of follow-on technologies, and occur earlier in the product life cycle than other corporate inventions do. We test these propositions with a large data set of medical device inventions. We find support for our predictions and discuss the implications of our results for the theoretical and empirical literature on organizational innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents industrial company's engineering activities in order to define that they stand out from other activities and engineers occupy an important role in product development process. Analysis of the data was carried out and it presented information about shaping the engineering activities, goals, objectives, responsibilities of engineers, their promoting methods, administrative efficiency and influence on the company's economic results. At the end of the article we present ideas and schemes how to assess the activities of engineering and engineers from economic and social aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between information technology (IT) and trademarks. Using an 11-year panel data set (1987-1997) of IT capital stock, trademark holdings, and other measures for 116 Fortune 1000 manufacturing firms, we find that IT contributes to higher trademark holdings. Further, we find evidence suggesting that firms with more IT capital tend to apply for more new trademarks and retire existing trademarks more quickly, leading to a shorter trademark life cycle. Because trademarks are mainly used by firms to communicate differences among similar products to the marketplace, these results suggest that the business value of IT can be realized in greater product variety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OVERVIEW: Along with other Web 2.0 market intelligence tools, online idea competitions can provide essential input for decision making in the early phases of product innovation. However, in order to use online competitions effectively, it is essential to know when to use which method, how to use it, and to what extent virtual and conventional research techniques can be used interchangeably or complementarily. A first step toward assessing the power of Web 2.0 techniques is to compare them with traditional ones. We compare the expense and results of online idea competitions with focus groups for idea generation in the market for senior citizen mobile phones and services. We find that idea competitions lead to more and better ideas at a lower cost per idea, while focus groups yield richer interactions with users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Now the customers are not passive, they are highly networked and connected with companies. Some companies take advantage of these features to innovate products from customer contributions. Co - creation like collaborative model to the innovation is characterized from being divided into interrelated stages in order to capture client's contributions in an appropriate way. The ability to assess and rank the contributions of the actors involved in this collaborative process is a crucial organizations task. The present paper proposes a fuzzy system that allows valuation for agent's contributions that participate in a collaborative way in products and services co - creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms accumulate knowledge through product development activities such as efficient product design, various experimental data, and know-how of project management. By exploiting this knowledge, firms are able to improve product quality, reduce cost, and shorten the development lead time. The more firms accumulate knowledge, the more they are able to gain competitiveness by exploiting their knowledge. However, because of efficiency gained by exploitation, firms can sometimes excessively exploit their knowledge, thus making their products too similar to and less attractive than earlier products and, as a result, lose competitiveness. In this paper, we employ a time series analysis to show that excess exploitation of know-how reduced product creativity in the Japanese video game industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past, Caribbean nations have attempted to offset their vulnerability by negotiating Special and Differential Treatment for their products and by advancing the process of regional integration. Neither is likely to be successful in the future. An alternative way to reduce vulnerability would be for the region to become more technologically advanced. This paper advances a strategy to encourage well-educated members of the Caribbean diaspora to return home to help the region to become more technologically progressive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When developing products such as computers, machinery and automobiles, interdependent components developed by different first-tier suppliers must fit together and perform as expected in the final product. Applying information processing theory and social network theory, this research explores three approaches that buyers can use to manage the interface between interdependent first-tier suppliers during product development. These are (1) using an interactive team, (2) making a supplier-supplier connection by encouraging first-tier suppliers to communicate, coordinate and mutually adjust and (3) using a modular design. Data were gathered in an online survey of buying firms in manufacturing industries and hypotheses were tested using hierarchical moderated regression. Results show that interactive teams increase the quality of the component system and that modular designs increase product development efficiency. Interactive teams are more beneficial for system quality when the technology used for components are new to suppliers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managing development decisions for new products based on dynamically evolving technologies is a complex task, especially in highly competitive industries. Product managers often have to choose between introducing an incrementally better, safe new product early and a superior, yet highly risky, product later. Recommendations for managing such performance vs. time-to-market trade-offs often ignore competitive reactions to development decisions. In this paper, we study how a firm could incorporate the presence of a strategic competitor in making technology selection and investment decisions regarding new products. We consider a model in which an innovating firm and its rival can introduce a new product immediately or pursue a more advanced product for later launch. Further, the firm can reduce the uncertainty surrounding product development by dedicating more resources; the effectiveness of this investment depends on the firm’s innovative capacity. Our model generates two sets of insights. First, in highly competitive industries, firms can adopt different technologies and effectively use introduction timing to mitigate the effects of price competition. More importantly, the firm could strategically invest in the advanced product to influence its rival’s technology choice. We characterize equilibrium development and investment decisions of the firms, and derive innovative capacity hurdles that govern a firm’s choice between the risky and safe alternatives. The effects of development flexibility—where firms might have the option to revert to the safe product if the advanced product fails—are also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Quality function deployment (QFD) has been widely recognized as an effective means to develop quality products that can maximize customer satisfactions. This paper presents a novel extension to the fuzzy QFD methodology using rough set theory, with the aim to facilitate decision making in the early stages of product development and lead to the establishment of a QFD-based expert system for product design. The proposed rough-fuzzy QFD system combines fuzzy arithmetic operations with the two novel concepts of rough number and rough boundary interval that are derived from rough set theory. A comparison between the proposed methodology and the traditional fuzzy QFD was performed. It has been shown that the proposed methodology not only can provide more insights into the vague voices of customers and technologists, but also can suppress the enlargement of boundary intervals after each arithmetic operation in QFD analysis. This would help in improving the discernibility of design objectives and thus facilitate the decision making in product development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this study is the transfer of marketing knowledge within Thai joint venture firms. The perspectives of Thai managers were surveyed using a structured instrument. The analysis identifies seven dimensions of marketing management knowledge: promotion management, price management, logistics management, product innovation management, strategic marketing management, cross-cultural management, and target marketing management. The incidence of transfer is highest for activities in strategic marketing management, followed by price management. Transfer in product innovation management and target marketing management tends to vary with the age of the joint venture. Joint venture firms with foreign partners originating from Western, advanced, industrialised nations recorded the highest incidence of knowledge transfer occurring within product innovation management. This trend also holds true for the management of promotion activities. The incidence of transfer in target marketing management is lowest among firms with foreign partners from neighbouring nations. The incidence of knowledge transfer within product innovation and target marketing also tends to vary with the age of the joint venture. An analysis based on industry classification revealed that the transfer of knowledge regarding logistics management occurs most for firms in the manufacturing sector. In the service sector, the highest incidence of knowledge transfer within the areas of promotion management and target marketing management occurred in the agricultural sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Product architecture and organizational communication play significant roles in complex product development efforts. By using networks to characterize both product structure and communication patterns, we examine the impact of mismatches between these on new product development (NPD) performance. Specifically, we study the vehicle development process of a major auto company and use vehicle quality (warranty repairs) as our NPD performance metric. Our empirical results indicate that centrality in a product architecture network is related to quality according to an inverted-U relationship, which suggests that vehicle subsystems of intermediate complexity exhibit abnormally high levels of quality problems. To identify specific subsystems in danger of excessive quality problems, we characterize mismatches between product architecture and organizational structure by defining a new metric, called coordination deficit, and show that it is positively associated with quality problems. These results deepen our understanding of the impact of organizational structure and product architecture on the NPD process and provide tools with which managers can diagnose and improve their NPD systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic markets and web-based content have improved traditional product development processes by increasing the participation of customers and applying various recommender systems to satisfy individual customer needs. Agent-based systems based on agents’ roles and tasks can provide appropriate tools to solve product design problems by recommending design knowledge and information. This paper introduces an agent-based recommender system to support designing families of products based on customers’ preferences in dynamic electronic market environments. In the proposed system, a market-based learning mechanism is applied to determine the customers’ preferences for recommending appropriate products to customers of the product family. We demonstrate the implementation of the proposed recommender system using a multi-agent framework. Through simulated experiments, we illustrate that the proposed recommender system can help determine the preference values of products for customized recommendation and market segment design in various electronic market environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies in management control have drawn upon the concepts of coercive and enabling forms of bureaucracy (Adler and Borys 1996) to discuss how the features of a control system may affect employees' attitudes toward control. This question is relevant because enabling forms of control allow organizations to better manage tensions between efficiency and flexibility, which is arguably a key issue in many organizations today. Our paper contributes to this stream of research by detailing how enabling control functions in the particular setting of new product development. To this end, we draw upon empirical material collected through an in-depth field study carried out in a manufacturing organization. We use data from interviews, participant observation, and internal documentation in this firm to demonstrate how the combination of different control mechanisms helps the organization balance efficiency and flexibility. In addition, our paper sets out to explore how strategic change can influence the operation of enabling control. Focusing on the introduction of a new product strategy in our case organization, we describe employees' repair efforts in adapting the control system to their own needs. We find that these repair efforts are perceived as not wholly satisfactory, which suggests that, in the case of important strategic changes, repair may require more top-down management intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Product development in modern enterprises usually involves collaboration among designers, suppliers, contract manufacturers to achieve efficiency and rapid response to changing markets. Product-development cost, lead time, and reliability are very critical elements in addition to functional features. However, it becomes increasingly challenging to obtain an optimal decision with respect to these multiple criteria as the number of involved entities increases in modern product developments. There is a clear need for planning tools to support effective decision making in this domain. The availability of efficient and accurate multiobjective optimization (MOO) algorithms becomes critical in such a decision support tool. This paper poses the product development as a multiobjective assignment problem in the context of printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) industry. We describe a new class of MOO algorithm based on the principles of differential evolution (DE). The multiobjective DE (MODE) algorithm is shown to approach Pareto-optimal solutions in a wide class of problems with better performance than the nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II from the literature, providing a practical tool for product-development decision support. A decision support system based on the object-oriented design methodology is described in this paper with the MODE as the core search engine. Experimental study of this decision support system is conducted using two real-world PCBA designs. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this proposed MODE algorithm and some use cases of such decision support system on facilitating decision makers' tradeoff analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the technological capability in the Brazilian Official Pharmaceutical Laboratories [OPL]. The technological capability analysis could contribute to organization strategies and governmental actions in order to improve OPL basic tasks as well to incorporate new ones, particularly concerning the innovation management. Inspired in Figueiredo (2000, 2003a, 2003b) and Figueiredo and Ariffin (2003), a framework was drawn and adapted to pharmaceutical industry characteristics and current sanitary and health legislation. The framework allows to map different dimensions of the technological capability (installations, processes, products, equipments, organizational capability and knowledge management) and the level attained by OPL (ordinary or innovating capability). OPL show a good development of ordinary capabilities, particularly in Product and Processes. Concerning the other dimensions, OPL are quite diverse. In general, innovating capabilities are not much developed. In the short term, it was identified a dispersion in the capacitating efforts. Considering their present level and the absorption efforts, good perspectives can be found in Installations, Processes and Organizational Capability. A lower level of efforts in Products and Knowledge Management could undermine these capabilities in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At affluent markets, the literature on product development management tells us to aggregate value and technology, to differentiate products and to launch fast. And at the low-income markets? This exploratory research defines a popular product, characterizes and measures their markets in Brazil, and identifies innovation strategies for them. The results suggest that the effective strategic orientation differs from affluent markets. It includes: to enhance the auto service component; to identify and service the key functionalities to the targeted public; to standardize products and increase the production scale; to extend the product life cycle; to use convenient distribution and marketing channels; to build product images that have appeal in the popular market; to offer longer financing horizons with befittingly lower installments. Data came from market researches and general demographic census. General media published stories were used to identify companies and their strategies. And a few case studies allowed the authors a deeper exploration of the relevant themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]