PERSPECTIVE: Trends and Drivers of Success in NPD Practices: Results of the 2003 PDMA Best Practices Study^*

Abstract

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.

User-Generated Open Source Products: Founder's Social Capital and Time to Product Release

“…474-492, © 2012 INFORMS success too. Thus, the success of an OSS NPD process likely depends on the information and resources available and the characteristics of the product (Barczak et al 2009, Lee et al 2009). Furthermore, because the OSS community consists of two distinct subcommunities-developer users and end userstheir interplay should also affect OSS NPD success.…”

“…By serving as the access point for redundant connections, highly embedded founders enjoy the benefit of being the centers of action and can coordinate activities (Swaminathan and Moorman 2009). That is, high embeddedness provides the resources, information, and feedback necessary to ensure coordination in the OSS domain (Fleming et al 2007, Kogut andZander 1992), and it thereby reduces the time to product release (Barczak et al 2009). …”

Discussion on the Terms of Idea Managament and Idea Managament Systems

“…That emphasis that IM process starts with problem analysis and definition of tasks (idea generation, idea generation preparation phase) or in other words with definition of the aim of IM or what kind of ideas would be promoted. Idea generation preparation phase has also been recognized by other authors as an important part of IM, for example, Flynn et al (2003) defined IM as strategic directions, environment scanning, opportunity identification, idea generation, also Lindross (2006) has described opportunity identification as IM process part, but Barczak, Griffin and Kahn (2009) called this process -idea preparing.…”

Gestão do pré-desenvolvimento de produto: estudo de casos na indústria de equipamentos médico-hospitalares

“…O estabelecimento de estratégias específicas para o PDP tem um impacto positivo no sucesso do novo produto, pois direciona os esforços e cria uma visão compartilhada pelos membros da equipe de desenvolvimento (COOPER et al, 2004b;GRIFFIN;KAHN, 2009 GARRET, 1997;ERNST, 2002;COOPER et al, 2004c;MOSS, 2006).…”