From Embedded Knowledge to Embodied Knowledge: New Product Development as Knowledge Management

1998 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravindranath Madhavan ◽  
Rajiv Grover
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
New Product ◽  
Team Processes ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Personal Interaction ◽  
Design Variables ◽  
Embedded Knowledge ◽  
Team Orientation

Because new product development (NPD) teams are engaged in knowledge creation, NPD management should emphasize cognitive team processes rather than purely social processes. Using the notions of tacit knowledge and distributed cognition as a basis, the authors propose that the T-shaped skills, shared mental models, and NPD routines of team members, as well as the A-shaped skills of the team leader, are key design variables when creating NPD teams. The authors propose that trust in team orientation, trust in technical competence, information redundancy, and rich personal interaction are important process variables for the effective and efficient creation of new knowledge.

Influential Factors for Team Reflexivity and New Product Development

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 20-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wann-Yih Wu ◽  
Adriana A. Amaya Rivas ◽  
Ying-Kai Liao
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
New Product ◽  
Influential Factors ◽  
Relationship Conflict ◽  
Cognitive Fit ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Team Conflict ◽  
Management Perspective ◽  
Cognitive Fit Theory

Despite the important influence of team reflexivity on new product development (NPD) success, a thorough analysis of its key antecedents, mediators, and moderators is lacking in the literature. Using cognitive fit theory, knowledge management perspective, justice theory, and self-verification theory, this study proposed that existing knowledge, task familiarity, and procedural justice are three of the vital factors that lead to NPD success by encouraging team reflexivity. This study also examined the effects of team conflict on team reflexivity and NPD success. Survey data were collected from 254 NPD team members, and these data were then analyzed using the PROCESS Macro from SPSS and the partial least squares (PLS) approach. The results of this study showed that the three aforementioned factors play a significant role in NPD success. The importance of team conflict was then examined, and the results showed that when relationship conflict is higher, the effect of team reflexivity on NPD success tends to be weaker.

Globalised Adoption of Knowledge Management in New Product Development: A Conceptual Framework from Project Management Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-37
Author(s):  
Bak Aun Teoh ◽  
Wei Hong Ling ◽  
Amlus Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Project Management ◽  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Success Factors ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
New Product ◽  
Development Project ◽  
Team Members ◽  
The Impact

The growth in new knowledge and technology has substantially increased the complexity of the projects that is strongly influencing the time, cost, and quality of the project management. Due to the volatility of the current market, the effectiveness of knowledge management (KM) could reduce the project uncertainties, project life cycle costs, and risks of new product development (NPD). Since NPD is regarded as the key to innovation due to its strong connection between the knowledge and core competence, the ways how the knowledge will be captured, created, and shared among the project teams is important to remain competitive in today's business and market competition. Hence, the modes of how they are created and shared between the project team members as well as the impact of KM towards NPD will be discussed in this paper. KM are normally created and transferred through the conversion between explicit and tacit knowledge, which can be further applied into the project management. Furthermore, the existing knowledge of the organisation can be evaluated by the actions of decision makers, hence, it is undoubted that a better knowledge can lead to measurable efficiencies in production and product development. The key success factors of KM that have been implemented will be discussed in this paper as well, which help to increase the probability of project success. Keywords: New Product Development; Project Management; Knowledge Management; Globalisation

Between flexibility and discipline in new product development: expertise as a boundary condition

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Robey ◽  
Karl Hellman ◽  
Isabelle Monlouis ◽  
Kenneth Nations ◽  
Wesley J. Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
New Product ◽  
Market Definition ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
The Right ◽  
Cross Case Analysis ◽  
The Impact

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study two aspects of new product development (NPD) success – the impact of learning and the impact of structure – are studied. Design/methodology/approach A multiple case study method within a single setting consisting of in-depth interviews of two teams that developed successful, award-winning products and two teams that developed unsuccessful products. Findings Case 1: flexibility and expertise permitted learning and radical redefinition of the product mid-project and commercial success. Case 2: flexibility enabled adding expertise which was instrumental in success, iterating permitted optimizing pricing. Case 3: flexibility led to focusing on technical issues to the exclusion of commercial viability. Case 4: flexibility led to skipping market definition and partnering with a particular customer whose situation was idiosyncratic. Cross-case analysis: flexibility in teams with both technical and commercial expertise yielded success. Flexibility permitted teams consisting of narrow experts to invest development resources in products with insufficient market. Research limitations/implications This paper argues that the right balance between structure and flexibility is dependent on the level of expertise of the members of the NPD project teams. However, getting this balance right is not a sufficient condition for NPD success. The cases were theoretically blocked to develop theoretical insight, but additional cases are needed for a strong test of theory. Practical implications The more experienced team members are, the more the project benefits from flexibility. Conversely, an inexperienced team will benefit from a more structured process. Projects require iteration. The dichotomy between structure and flexibility is false: the most expert teams benefit from some structure. The most inexperienced teams must employ flexibility to learn. Originality/value The analysis combines the virtues of the stage-gate school and the flexibility school previously thought mutually exclusive.

Toward the development of new product ideas: asymmetric effects of team cohesion on new product ideation

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (7) ◽  
pp. 855-866 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanawat Hirunyawipada ◽  
Audhesh K. Paswan ◽  
Charles Blankson
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Development Process ◽  
New Product ◽  
Product Development Process ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Development Teams ◽  
Task Cohesion ◽  
Relational Aspect

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate asymmetric effects of team cohesion and team members’ relational qualification on the creativity of new product ideas. Design/methodology/approach – Structural equation modeling was conducted on survey data collected from 195 new product development practitioners in various US high-technology industries. Findings – The study suggests that creative and potentially successful product ideas include three dimensions – usefulness for customers, and novelty for customers and usefulness for the firms (i.e. enhancement efficiency and effectiveness of companies’ new product development process). By focusing on a relational aspect of new product development teams, the study shows that team task cohesion mediates the relationship between the antecedents (team members’ organizational commitment and social competency) and the three outcome dimensions of a successful product idea (novelty, usefulness to customers and usefulness to the firm). The team members’ interpersonal relationship has no positive association with task cohesion and the desirable qualifications of product ideas. Research limitations/implications – An ideation team’s socially competent members who identify with their organization are likely to be attracted to a given task. This task cohesion, in turn, enhances the creativeness of the development of product ideas. Practical implications – To generate fruitful product ideas using a team approach, companies should make sure that their new product ideation teams achieve a sense of mutual commitment to the given ideation tasks, develop a feeling of belongingness and ownership toward the firms and include members who have good social and interpersonal skills. However, the possession of strong social cohesion is not essential for the teams. Originality/value – This study provides novel insights concerning the relational aspect of product development teams assigned to the initiation phase (front end) of a new product development process.

The Architecture for Solving the Cross-Domain Keywords During New Product Development

2012 ◽  
Vol 605-607 ◽  
pp. 497-500
Author(s):  
Yung Chung Tsao ◽  
Kevin Chihcheng Hsu ◽  
Yin Te Tsai
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Domain Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Workers ◽  
New Product ◽  
Product Lifecycle Management ◽  
Case Based Reasoning ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Cross Domain

The team-members for the new product development (NPD) are recruited from different departments in the enterprises. So the team-members in the design teams range from novices to experts in NPD. The juniors developer in the design project team lack more successful product-design experiences as their seniority and skills. Therefore, those developers always query and search their problems with the limited terminology via the information systems or websites. So the results of the querying and searching always are limited to the similar domain-knowledge. The new product development (NPD) involves multidisciplinary knowledge such as accumulated experiences of knowledge-workers, and different technical and legal documents. The information systems (IS) facilitating the NPD processes often include document-based knowledge management system (KMS), Product Data Management (PDM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems etc. With these different systems, novices at various stages of NPD processes often have problems to use the exact and suitable keywords to query the problems from those information systems. The study proposes a case-based reasoning to construct a hierarchical knowledge model to record knowledge-workers’ experiences and to store the information of experiences and the recommendation of experts. The aim of the study is that the proposed architecture can query the information scattered in different information systems by using their individual-domain terminology and retrieve the better fitted results of the querying.

Dynamic capabilities of new product development teams in performing radical innovation projects

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chonlatis Darawong
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Dynamic Capabilities ◽  
New Product ◽  
Project Performance ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Efficiency And Effectiveness ◽  
The Impact

Purpose This paper aims to examine the impact of dynamic capabilities of new product development (NPD) team on project performance, including efficiency and effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from NPD team members who have worked on radical new product projects in large manufacturing firms in Thailand. Respondents represented different departments, including research and development (R&D), quality control, production and marketing. These individuals worked in a wide range of large manufacturing industries with an average of more than 500 employees. These industries include food, automotive, auto parts and electric and electronics products. Findings The results indicate that NPD team with sensing, learning and integrating capabilities can increase project effectiveness. In addition, teams with high learning, integrating and coordinating capabilities will enhance project efficiency. Research limitations/implications First, the research findings may not be generalizable in all aspects to other industries. Second, the use of cross-sectional data in this study may not be appropriate for testing causal relationships among constructs. Third, although the samples of this study were from a wide range of functional areas, the majority were R&D personnel. Practical implications To improve project effectiveness, project managers should consider investing in information technologies that provide a wide range of information sources, such as business research databases and academic journals. To improve project efficiency, the managers can establish both formal and informal activities during NPD projects. These social activities can provide opportunities for team members to physically meet and adjust their personal behavior to get along with each other. Originality/value These findings provide a wider picture of the beneficial role of dynamic capabilities of NPD teams toward project performance, including efficiency and effectiveness.

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