Working With More Creative Coworkers and New Product Development Team Performance

This study proposes that working with colleagues who have similar levels of open personality can enhance a person’s social exchange relationship with teammates, which then inspires the person’s creativity. This study also draws on the idea-journey model of creativity and innovation to propose that the positive relationship between team members’ aggregated similarity in openness personality with teammates and the performance of the new product that the team develops is stronger when members of the team possess low levels of openness personality in aggregate. Examining data collected from Taiwanese new product development team engineers, we find support for these arguments.

Experimental evaluation of Ellis scale for assessment of product's industrial design

The product development team has the task, amongst many others, to conceive the product's industrial design. Because it was proven and acknowledged that product's industrial design plays an important role in its success in the marketplace, the proposed design has to be evaluated based on an objective method. S.R. Ellis has proposed a method with seven criteria. The method was used by some researchers, but it has never been properly evaluated by an independent party. This paper presents the results of a scientific experiment aimed to test Ellis' method.

Four approaches for staffing and structuring a product development team to identify the crucial unmet needs of B2B customers

Purpose Offer a new model for identifying effective approaches to gathering, understanding and synthesizing information related to new product needs of B2B customers. Design/methodology/approach Arthur D. Little, together with the Eindhoven University of Technology, conducted in-depth interviews with over 30 product development leaders in 15 companies across multiple sectors. Findings When the team interacting with customers is structured appropriately the research showed that “getting it right” can lead to doubling of innovation success rates and have significant impact on R&D effectiveness. Practical implications By identifying the degree to which B2B customer needs are clear (expressed) or unclear (latent) and the degree to which technology needs are known (expressed) or unclear (latent), we can start to characterize the most appropriate skill set that a multifunctional product development team will need in order to develop a winning product. Originality/value Companies can use an innovative analysis framework to help make informed decisions about how best to organize their teams. The four approaches can be mapped to the four quadrants of a “Customer Needs/Technology Needs” matrix. The study concludes that the benefits are both strategically and financially significant.