Since 1990, the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA) has sponsored best practice research projects to identify trends in new product development (NPD) management practices and to discern which practices are associated with higher degrees of success. The objective of this ongoing research is to assist managers in determining how to improve their own product development methods and practices. This paper presents results, recommendations, and implications for NPD practice stemming from PDMA's third best practices study, which was conducted in 2003. In the eight years since the previous best practices study was conducted, firms have become slightly more conservative in the portfolio of projects, with lower percentages of the total number of projects in the new-to-the-world and new-to-the-firm categories. Although success rates and development efficiencies have remained stable, this more conservative approach to NPD seems to have negatively impacted the sales and profits impact of the new products that have been commercialized. As formal processes for NPD are now the norm, attention is moving to managing the multiple projects across the portfolio in a more orchestrated manner. Finally, firms are implementing a wide variety of software support tools for various aspects of NPD. NPD areas still seriously in need of improved management include idea management, project leadership and training, cross-functional training and team communication support, and innovation support and leadership by management. In terms of aspects of NPD management that differentiate the ''best from the rest,'' the findings indicate that the best firms emphasize and integrate their innovation strategy across all the levels of the firm, better support their people and team communications, conduct extensive experimentation, and use numerous kinds of new methods and techniques to support NPD. All companies appear to continue to struggle with the recording of ideas and making them readily available to others in the organization, even the best. What remains unclear is whether there is a preferable approach for organizing the NPD endeavor, as no one organizational approach distinguished top NPD performers.

Teams represent a dominant approach to getting work done in a business environment. Creativity enables teams to solve problems and leverage opportunities through the integration of divergent thoughts and perspectives. Prior research indicates that a collaborative culture, which affects how team members interact and work together, is a critical antecedent of team creativity. This study explores other antecedents of team creativity, namely, team emotional intelligence and team trust, and investigates the relationships among these precursors to creative effort. Using a survey of 82 student teams at a large university in the northeast United States, our findings suggest that team emotional intelligence promotes team trust. Trust, in turn, fosters a collaborative culture which enhances the creativity of the team. Cognitive trust also moderates the relationship between collaborative culture and team creativity. Implications of these results for managers and academics are discussed.

Achieving NPD best practices is a top-of-mind issue for many new product development (NPD) managers and is often an overarching implicit, if not explicit, goal.The question is what does one mean when talking about NPD best practices? And how does a manager move toward achieving these?This article proposes a best practices framework as a starting point for muchneeded discussion on this topic. Originally presented during the 2004 Product Development Management Association (PDMA) Research Conference in Chicago, the article and the authors' presentation spurred a significant, expansive discussion that included all conference attendees. Given the interest generated, the decision was made to move forward on a series of rejoinders on the topic of NPD best practice, using the Kahn, Barczak, and Moss framework as a focal launching point for these rejoinders. A total of five rejoinders were received and accompany the best practices framework in this issue of JPIM. Each rejoinder brings out a distinct issue because each of the five authors has a unique perspective.

Efforts continue to identify new product development (NPD) best practices. Examples of recognized studies include those by the Product Development and Management Association's Comparative Performance Assessment Study and the American Productivity Quality Center NPD best practices study. While these studies designate practices that distinguish top-performing companies, it is unclear whether NPD practitioners as a group (not just researchers) are knowledgeable about what represents a NPD best practice. The importance of this is that it offers insight into how NPD practitioners are translating potential NPD knowledge into actual NPD practice. In other words, are practitioners aware of and able to implement NPD best practices designated by noteworthy studies? The answer to this question ascertains a current state of the field toward understanding NPD best practice and the maturity level of various practices. Answering this question further contributes to our understanding of the diffusion of NPD best practices knowledge by NPD professionals, possibly identifying gaps between prescribed and actual practice. Beginning the empirical examination by conducting a Delphi methodology with 20 leading innovation researchers, the study examined the likely dimensions of NPD and corresponding definitions to validate the NPD practices framework originally proposed by Kahn, Barczak, and Moss. A survey was then conducted with practitioners from the United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland to gauge opinions about perceptions of the importance of different NPD dimensions, specific characteristics reflected by each of these dimensions, and the level of NPD practice maturity that these characteristics would represent. The study is therefore unique in that it relies on the opinions of NPD practitioners to see what they perceive as best practice versus prior studies where the researcher has identified and prescribed best practices.Results of the present study find that seven NPD dimensions are recommended, whereas the 2006 Kahn, Barczak, and Moss framework had suggested six dimensions. Among practitioners across the three country contexts, there is consensus on which dimensions are more important, providing evidence that NPD dimensions may be generalizable across Western contexts. Strategy was rated higher than any of the other dimensions followed by research, commercialization, and process. Project climate and metrics were perceived as the lowest in importance. The high weighting on strategy and low weighting on metrics and project climate reinforce previous best practice findings. Regarding the characteristics of each best practice dimension, practitioners appear able to distinguish what constitutes poor versus best practice, but consensus on distinguishing middle range practices are not as clear.The suggested implications of these findings are that managers should emphasize strategy when undertaking NPD efforts and consider the fit of their projects with this strategy. The results further imply that there are clearly some poor practi...

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