The Transformation of the Innovation Process: How Digital Tools are Changing Work, Collaboration, and Organizations in New Product Development*

Abstract

Over the past several decades, digitization has invaded all areas of human activity, including innovation. The result of digitization of existing tools for design and collaboration, and the introduction of entirely new digital tools, is a far more substantive change of innovation than previous generations of tools enabled. It affects not only the quality of the output and speed of its generation, but it affects the innovation work itself, changes work content, collaboration patterns, decision authority, organizational set‐ups, governance structures, firm boundaries, and ultimately entire ecosystems. In this paper, the digitization of New Product Development (NPD), a subset of innovation, is studied to pursue two research questions: (1) How has the digital tool landscape in NPD changed over the past 15 years, and (2) how have these changes affected how firms innovate? This research uses a longitudinal multi‐method, qualitative approach to deep dive into actual use cases of digital design tools such as computer‐aided design CAD and new tools such as collaborative information technology (CIT). The changes in these tools and observations into how these tools are transforming the very nature of how things are designed is the research focus of this study. These tools have become increasingly more sophisticated while being easier to use and are integrated earlier in the design process. As a result, digital tools have a far broader reaching impact than previous generation of tools. Not only do they affect output and process efficiency, but they also increase depth and breadth of the work of individual innovators, they lead to rearrangement of the entire innovation processes, enable new configurations of people, teams, and firms, and rewrite the rules on how knowledge management acts as a critical competitive capability. The progression of digitization is laying the groundwork for changes to what firms are and do and points to different ways of organizing, specializing, and training for NPD professionals.

Digital Transformation and Innovation Management: A Synthesis of Existing Research and an Agenda for Future Studies

“…Findings show how such a hybrid model led to the emergence of three paradoxes at the organizational level (paradoxes of organizing, attention, and knowledge sharing) and that how employees cope with this approach influences its effectiveness and sustainability over time. Finally, Marion and Fixson (this issue) bridge theoretical and practical perspectives to investigate how digital design and communication tools have matured and developed over time, how they are being used by project teams today, what factors enhance or inhibit their use, and how they contribute to changes in design activities during the new product development process. By conducting a qualitative, longitudinal case study of digital design and collaborative information technology tools use among real‐world designers and project teams, the authors show how these digital tools enable different solutions for organizing, specializing, and training for new product development professionals.…”

“…The papers published in this special issue discuss and analyze some of these under‐investigated issues. Specifically, by covering three level of analysis (namely, macro, meso, and micro), and by integrating both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, they shed new light on digital product platforms (Hilbolling et al, this issue), provide evidence about the impact of big data on firm performance (Cappa et al, this issue), investigate the role of organizational adaptability, agility, and ambidexterity on digital trasnformation (Scuotto et al, this issue), frame the influence of digitization and connectivity on knowledge search and recombination (Lanzolla et al, this issue), analyse the role of digital machines on production process routines (Aversa et al, this issue), discuss how the interplay between family management and technological diversification shape the development of exploratory and exploitative IoT innovations (Ceipek et al, this issue), unveil how employees respond to ambidextrous organizational models to accelerate digital innovations (Smith & Beretta, this issue), assess the impact of digital tools on organizational practices in the innovation process (Marion & Fixson, this issue).…”

Paving a path for a post‐COVID‐19 innovative environment

“…As new product development teams continue to disperse geographically (McDonough et al, 2001), teamwork quality is more difficult to achieve yet essential to team performance (Hoegl et al, 2007). Digital tools for communication, product design, and knowledge management have become integrated into the new product development process (Marion & Fixson, 2020). Yet, social interaction is necessary for effective knowledge sharing and generation (Nonaka, 1994), which continues to face challenges even with current digital tools.…”

New Product Development Process Design for Small and Medium Enterprises: A Systematic Literature Review from the Perspective of Open Innovation

“…The NPD process is defined as designed specific steps that describe how an organization transforms their product idea into marketable products [12]. While several issues on the NPD process; such as the NPD process in the context of Industry 4.0 [13], social product development process [14], how digital tools change the NPD process [15], knowledge sharing in NPD processes [16], and resource allocation in NPD processes [17]; have emerged and been studied, it is agreed that an organization needs to design their own NPD process that fits with their strategic goals and situations [3,18,19], and open innovation can help SMEs overcome their innovation issues [20].…”