How Should Customers Be Integrated for Effective Interorganizational NPD Teams? An Input–Process–Output Perspective

Abstract

Interorganizational new product development (NPD) teams with business customers are rapidly becoming more prevalent; yet the drivers of such cooperations at the team level remain unclear to practitioners and researchers alike. This study proposes an input–process–output model in which various characteristics of interorganizational teams affect NPD team effectiveness through the mediating construct of NPD team cooperation. Furthermore, various moderators, reflecting the supplier's dependence on the customers (customer power and customer participation) and the supplier's environmental uncertainty (market dynamism and technological turbulence), affect the strength of the underlying relationships. The results show that customer power positively affects the relationship between intrapersonal team characteristics and team cooperation. In addition, a negative moderation occurs in interpersonal characteristics. Customer participation exhibits opposing moderating effects. Regarding the supplier's environmental uncertainty, market dynamism and technological turbulence strengthen the relationships under consideration.

Utilizing customer knowledge in innovation: antecedents and impact of customer involvement on new product performance

“…In a firm with more experience of coordinating across different functions, NPD employees are likely to have developed common knowledge and an appreciation of diverse perspectives, which helps them to better understand customers' insights (Salge et al 2013) and be open to unique inputs (Jespersen 2010;Stock 2014). This helps to improve the quality of interaction between NPD employees and the customers, and facilitate the integration of customers into the collaborative NPD process (Jaakkola and Alexander 2014).…”

“…• Organizational socialization Büttgen et al 2012 • Employees' competence and motivation Bartl et al 2012;Chatenier et al 2010;Du and Pan 2013;Foss et al 2011;Jespersen 2010;Salge et al 2013;Stock 2014 Consequences Customers Impact on customers • Improved customer satisfaction, loyalty, product evaluation, and relationship with the firm Auh et al 2007;Bendapudi and Leone 2003;Brodie et al 2013;Buechel and Janiszewski 2014;Chan et al 2010;Dong et al 2008;Gallan et al 2013;Roggeveen et al 2012; Troye and Supphellen 2012 • Psychological outcomes such as empowerment Brodie et al 2013 • Improved customer perception of product quality, firm capability, and purchase intention Fuchs and Schreier 2011;Schreier et al 2012 • Psychological outcomes such as feelings of enjoyment and accomplishment Firm Impact on firm performance…”

“…Meanwhile, the literature widely recognizes the challenges of implementing customer involvement, yet very few studies have examined the organizational mechanisms needed to overcome these challenges. For example, close collaboration with customers requires customer coordination (Stock 2014), which increases the complexity of NPD management (Hoyer et al 2010) and may lead to role conflict for employees (Chan et al 2010). Granting customers more autonomy may reduce the firm's control over NPD activities (Gruner et al 2014), require substantial organizational change (Hoyer et al 2010), and limit the ability to leverage technological knowledge (Magnusson 2009).…”

External Involvement and New Product Performance: The Mediating Role of New Product Advantage

“…The enterprise can broaden its knowledge's depth and breadth by adsorbing customer's knowledge, and the acquired knowledge substantially enrich the product assortment [3]. Involving customer in NPD process also provide enterprise a better understanding of the customer' requirements, thus finding accurate market localization for new product [16]. Meanwhile, customers offer firms complementary and first-hand information, which greatly reduce the probability of poor design.…”

A framework for identifying performance targets for sustainable nanomaterials

“…1) has been in existence for quite some time, and has been used to describe both theoretical and existent systems primarily in the fields of business process modeling and data analytics. It has been used to explain characteristics in technology systems [15], measure success factors in project management [31], predict user acceptance in information systems [8], and describe team characteristics in new product development [30]. This paper describes how the IPO model can be applied as an evaluative tool for the domain of sustainability in materials and technology.…”