Tailoring product development to strategy : case of a European technology manufacturer
- 2000
A large body of work on new product development (NDP) has identified a number of general success drivers, which imply `best practice` approaches in NPD. In particular, a new market or a newer technology renders a project riskier and, therefore, requires a higher hurdle rate on returns. Furthermore, a good NPD process exhibits curtomer orientatio, top management support, existence of a champion, good planning and execution with a strong project maanger, and the use of a welldefined process with formal measures. Radically new NPD projects requre less structure and more exploration than incremental projects. This article examines whether such general `best practices` are directly applicable to a specif company. We study 90 NPD projects across many different business units in a large diversified European technology manufacturer. We find that the market positioning of new products depends more on the specific portfolio needs of our host company than on general principles of riskiness. In addition, we identify hree predominat NPD process approaches in the company, but sucess differences among them are `muddled`by the non-targetd way they are used. We conclude that there is no `best practice` NPD process. Rather, a company should develop a customized NPD project portfolio and a corresonding mixture of processes, whith together meet it strategic innovation needs. We develop a systematic procedure that can help a company to achieve such strategic aligment
New Product Development Project Management Project Success Factors NPD Processes Strategic Alignment of NPD