Antecedents and Consequences of Knowledge Integration in Product Development: An Empirical Evidence

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explain product development performance through the link between knowledge management and knowledge integration. When product development teams integrate knowledge about two external entities -customers and suppliers, they acquire a better understanding of the market and of each other's needs and capabilities, which enables them to operate and innovate better than their competitors. In this context, our theoretical framework focuses on the social enablers usually associated to knowledge management, and combine them with knowledge integration as to determine product development performance. This performance is measured through two distinct components, or types of outcomes: (1) process outcomes, which analyze the effectiveness of the product development process and it is measured in terms of teamwork-and (2) product outcomes, which concerns the characteristics associated with the value of the product to customer. A survey conducted with product development managers was used in order to develop and test our hypothesis that knowledge integration in combination with knowledge management has a positive impact on product development performance.

Customer knowledge enabled innovation capability: proposing a measurement scale

“…However, previous research that studied dynamic capabilities in CKM and innovation contexts (Revilla and Cury, 2008;Salojarvi and Saino, 2006;Al Shamary, 2005;Bouzidi and Gharbi, 2007;Rollins and Aino, 2005;Van Winkellen and Jordan, 2008;Wang and Ahmed, 2007) are, either exploratory or theoretical in nature where the objective is mostly limited to propose a construct without focusing on its measurement, or adapting existing scales of related concepts such as the absorptive capacity, the knowledge sharing, market intelligence and the intellectual capital scales without taking into consideration the specificities of the concepts under studies. Table I summarizes the main concepts that are related to customer knowledge and innovation management as provided in the literature review as well as their definitions, dimensions and measurement scales.…”

“…For the ''customer knowledge management'' measurement, Bouzidi and Gharbi (2007) have adapted the McCann and Brukner's (2004) scale dealing with the intellectual capital. As for Revilla and Cury (2008), they have limited their ''knowledge integration capability in the product development'' to sharing knowledge with customers and suppliers, which is too broad and generic because knowledge sharing is just one facet of several other knowledge based capabilities.…”

“…In fact, in order to manage individual customer relationships, customer information and knowledge should be made available to everyone in the organization dealing with customers and using customer knowledge in decision making (Rolling and Aino, 2005). According to Revilla and Cury (2008), knowledge is usually developed by individuals on the basis of day-to-day collective work and, as such, knowledge is a continuous result of interactions between people, within and outside the organization. Jordan (1998) suggests that the encouragement of face-to-face interaction between new product development team members enables creative improvisation and knowledge sharing, leading in this manner to effective knowledge dissemination.…”

The Impact of Medical Tourist Relationship Management Dimensions on Innovation Capabilities

“…For example, Taherparvar, Esmaeilpour, and Dostar (2014) argued that knowledge management has a significant effect on innovation capability. Also, Revilla and Cury (2008) have demonstrated that knowledge management has a positive effect on product innovation (Allameh & Abbas, 2010;Lee, Chang, Chien, Huang, & Chen, 2010;Yang, 2011).…”

Knowledge integration of collaborative product design using cloud computing infrastructure

“…E. Revilla and T. Curry [14] developed a framework to test the impact of customer and supplier knowledge integration in product development performance. They highlighted the positive effects of customer in product innovation.…”