A new fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making approach for risk assessment of competitors’ cooperation in new product development projects

Purpose This study aims to identify and accurately assess the risk factors of competitors’ cooperation in the NPD project. Design/methodology/approach New product development (NPD) is essential to the survival of companies and surpassing other competitors. A key prerequisite for the success of an NPD project is the timing of new product delivery to the market. The main challenge faced by many project managers is the delay in execution and completion phases due to the complex nature and uncertainty of these projects. Rival companies' cooperation reduces the time spent on an NPD project which is an excellent way to reduce the risk of losing the market, but it increases other risk factors. Findings Based on the results, the security and confidentiality of innovation, the competitors attracting human resources and the company’s brand credibility factors were ranked higher than other factors and should be predicted and managed before cooperating with competitors. Originality/value This paper proposed a new model to assess risk factors in cooperation with rival companies in NPD projects. This model takes into account new parameters, for example, negative and positive risks, negative and positive passable risks and risk-based multi-objective optimization by ratio analysis plus full multiplicative form methodology for the rival companies cooperation in NPD projects. To evaluate the efficiency of the proposed model, a real case of the R&D unit of Iran Khodro Company was studied.

Strategic Supplier Selection's Effects on Buyer Competitive Performance in Matching Domains: Is Supplier Integration Effective at Mediating Relationships?

The purpose of this research is to determine whether strategic supplier selection based on supplier capability in new product development, supplier quality, and supplier cost directly or indirectly improves the buyer's competitive performance capabilities in the matched domains of buyer product innovation, buyer quality, and buyer competitive pricing. The resource-based view of the firm is used to frame the direct effects of strategic supplier selection, arguing that a buyer's ability to select a supplier with resources and expertise in a specified domain should improve the buyer's performance capability in the "matched" domain (but not necessarily in "unmatched" domains). Two supplier integration techniques are considered as potential mediators, assuming indirect pathways. The research hypotheses examine both direct and indirect impacts for each of the matched domains, but do not assume cross-domain interactions. For instance, supplier selection for new product development capability should have an effect on buyer product innovation (in matched domains), but not always on buyer quality capability (unmatched domains). While the direct impacts of strategic supplier selection on buyer performance are supported in each matched domain, the indirect effects via supplier integration are not substantial for the matched domains. Strategic supplier selection is identified as a viable source of competitive advantage in the resource-based view. By contrast, supplier development and supplier partnership do not provide additional performance benefits in a particular domain over and beyond those obtained from strategic supplier selection in that domain; rather, it is the type of the resources selected that determines competitive advantage.

Open Challenges and Research Roadmap: Visual Representations aiding Organizational Leadership in Decision Making for New Product Development at the Early Innovation Stage

Innovation is a cornerstone for an organization’s survival and success in the global competitive landscape in the VUCA world. The New Product Development (NPD) process is a crucial part of the portfolio and Innovation Management (IM) process. The leadership of an organization has a disproportionate impact on the outcome of innovation activities. Their involvement in IM and NPD is critical for success, considering they make strategic decisions to allocate resources for business growth. The leadership team demands a holistic picture of ideas before making decisions at early stages. The leadership challenge in decision making is that they have a limited time to make decisions by understanding many related aspects and insights quickly. The visual approaches have been vital in management practices to understand the situation and aid in decision-making by supporting cognitive processes. The fundamental problem in using visual representation is hidden expectations of leadership teams to represent needed elements to aid in strategic decision-making by leadership at the early stage of innovation. Also, the configuration of elements and interplay is another issue. The core challenge lies in understanding the effectiveness of currently used visual representations and then improving them by identifying needed elements and their configuration and placement in the visual representation. The paper takes literature review, expert interviews, and brainstorming approaches to distill the challenges to the concrete research questions and objectives. Providing solutions to the open research questions and challenges can significantly enhance the quality and speed of innovation-related decision-making.

Open Challenges and Research Roadmap: Visual Representations aiding Organizational Leadership in Decision Making for New Product Development at the Early Innovation Stage

Innovation is a cornerstone for an organization’s survival and success in the global competitive landscape in the VUCA world. The New Product Development (NPD) process is a crucial part of the portfolio and Innovation Management (IM) process. The leadership of an organization has a disproportionate impact on the outcome of innovation activities. Their involvement in IM and NPD is critical for success, considering they make strategic decisions to allocate resources for business growth. The leadership team demands a holistic picture of ideas before making decisions at early stages. The leadership challenge in decision making is that they have a limited time to make decisions by understanding many related aspects and insights quickly. The visual approaches have been vital in management practices to understand the situation and aid in decision-making by supporting cognitive processes. The fundamental problem in using visual representation is hidden expectations of leadership teams to represent needed elements to aid in strategic decision-making by leadership at the early stage of innovation. Also, the configuration of elements and interplay is another issue. The core challenge lies in understanding the effectiveness of currently used visual representations and then improving them by identifying needed elements and their configuration and placement in the visual representation. The paper takes literature review, expert interviews, and brainstorming approaches to distill the challenges to the concrete research questions and objectives. Providing solutions to the open research questions and challenges can significantly enhance the quality and speed of innovation-related decision-making.

DESIGN INNOVATION PROCESS RESPONDS TO UNMET NEEDS CREATED BY COVID-19

This article presents a recent case study of the development and bringing to market of a new product through the design process of the author, Dan Brown, Ph.D. (Brown Sr.), a product design practitioner and academic with over 40 years of innovation experience, and his son Brown Jr., a business entrepreneur. This case explores how they collaborated as an entrepreneurial team to design and commercialize a novel PPE face shield using Brown Sr.’s Differentiation by Design research process. The article focuses on how design creates value and competitive advantage in markets by examining a recent case study of successful new product development arising from the COVID-19 pandemic -- providing adequate personal protective equipment (PPE).When seeking advantage in the practice of innovation, there is a creative quest that product design and development practitioners must address through their design process. Truly innovative and competitive new products are rare, as their design efforts often fall short of the original design aims. Brown Sr.’s past research has revealed that this creative quest often appears at the intersection of the existing knowledge boundaries of the user as well as the many less prominent stakeholders in the new product experience.Often framed as unmet stakeholder needs, this knowledge boundary appears when existing practice knowledge proves inadequate, but the development objective remains. These knowledge gap opportunities appear through detailed research of the problem, existing solution benchmarks, and stakeholders. They can also appear when the designer-researcher looks for them specifically. Finding these knowledge gaps and creatively conceiving advantaged solutions into competitively advantaged spaces or white spaces is the goal of this design process.This Case shares successful marketplace outcomes with Brown Sr.’s past research cases resulting from their design and development approaches. With a combined quantitative and qualitative research focus, this autobiographical case study builds on the insights available to the researcher. Autobiographic cases provide unique access to rich quantitative evidence of the design narrative and marketing histories gained from an insider’s view of industry practice.Competitive advantage and its role in innovation in the real-world laboratory of the marketplace provide the context for researching the process of this design-focused strategy. The process starts with reframing the fundamental problem, which was, in this case, how to rapidly produce millions of face shields in a matter of months; the Browns teamed up to create a viable and scalable shield solution for the masses.

New Product Development and Regulatory Challenges in Nutraceutical Industry

Functional food ingredients and dietary supplements are essential for health promotion and disease risk reduction. The demand for various food products is increasing day by day due to ever increasing population. Different multinational companies have invested to meet the demands of the people all over the world. However, some miscreants have adultered different food products that caused various concerns to the people and the government. Hence, different laws in different countries have been regulated to maintain the quality of food. However, there is major legislation and product approval challenges which should be aligned by global common regulations to move forward by reducing the scope for conflict between our regulatory approaches and by forging closer cooperation that can only be addressed by appropriate and accurate ingredients understanding, safety legislation, clinical studies benefits, advanced food processing technologies and various analytical studies. The nutraceutical revolution will direct us into a new era of medicine and health, in which the food industry will become a research oriented, analogous to the pharmaceutical industry. The present review article discusses the recent status of nutraceuticals and their importance to prevent various diseases.

Assessing the New Product Development Process for the Industrial Decarbonization of Sustainable Economies

This study aims to find out the significant stages of new product development process for the industrial decarbonization of sustainable economies by using interval type-2 (IT2) fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL). The findings demonstrate that commercialization is the most significant process of new product generation process of industrial decarbonization. Moreover, it is also concluded that with respect to the sub-criteria, cost analysis, and performance evaluation have the highest weights. An effective cost analysis is required in the new product development process. The costs of the product development process can in some cases be much higher than anticipated. This situation eliminates the effectiveness of the newly developed product. In this context, companies need to make the necessary plans for the costs of these new products correctly. On the other hand, it is important to follow the costs in detail during the process. Otherwise, the product that does not provide a cost advantage will not be preferred by industrial companies. This will cause the actions to be taken to reduce carbon emissions to fail.

Does supplier involvement enhance financial performance? The encapsulation effects of product modularity and smartness

Purpose This study aims to explore the conditional relationships between supplier involvement and financial performance. From a problem-solving perspective, this study takes the focal firm as a problem-solving system. It is postulated that supplier involvement enhances financial performance by helping solve complex problems of new product development. Furthermore, product modularity and smartness are considered contingent factors to clarify the boundary conditions. Design/methodology/approach The ordinary least squares regression was conducted to test the hypotheses based on survey data from 136 high-tech firms in China. Findings Supplier involvement is positively related to financial performance. Product modularity weakens the impact of supplier involvement on financial performance. Furthermore, product smartness strengthens the negative influence of product modularity on the relationship between supplier involvement and financial performance. Originality/value This study combines supplier involvement with product attributes. It takes a problem-solving perspective to rethink suppliers’ roles in new product development as problem-solvers rather than resource holders. Furthermore, this study advances the encapsulation effects of product modularity and smartness to influence the supplier involvement–financial performance link.