If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -Customer participation has been recognised as a critical factor in successful new product development (NPD). However, there is scant empirical evidence on how customer participation affects NPD performance. This research attempts to provide a framework to interpret how interorganisational relationships mediate the impact of customer participation on NPD performance based on marketing, innovation management and social networks literature. Design/methodology/approach -An empirical study of 179 high-tech firms in Taiwan is analysed by structural equation modelling. Findings -The results indicate that the impacts of customer participation as an information resource and customer participation as a co-developer on NPD performance are mediated by inter-organisational relationships. Practical implications -The results offer a guideline for high-tech firms that decide to involve customers in NPD activities. In order to improve efficiency and effectiveness, this research suggests that firms build inter-organisational relationships with customers to foster knowledge sharing, cooperation, and problem solving. However, firms should be aware that product innovativeness may be hindered by such close collaborative relationships. Originality/value -The research demonstrates that the contributions of customer participation may not be regarded as inevitable. The authors confirm that research for investigating the linkage between customer participation and NPD performance should consider the mediating roles of interorganisational relationships, which may help resolve the conflicting results obtained by researchers on the contributions of customer participation. In addition, the results show that the establishment of close customer-supplier relationships during NPD cooperation is a key success factor for both efficiency and effectiveness, but has the opposite effect on product innovativeness.

Purpose – There are contradicted perspectives on relationship between geographic cluster and competitive advantage of firms in previous research. Extant research has paid extremely attention to the effect of both geographic cluster and industrial network on firms’ performance; however, little studies have delineated the relationship between geographic cluster, industrial network, and competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that firms within the same cluster that have established idiosyncratic network resources have stronger competitive advantages than firms that have not. Design/methodology/approach – An empirical study of two prominent geographic clusters from Taiwan is analyzed by structural equation modeling. Findings – The results indicate that the degree of networking does play a mediating role between geographic cluster and competitive advantage, which may help resolve the conflicting results obtained by researchers on the influence of clusters on competitive advantage. The results also find that both degree of networking and betweenness position are conducive to the pursuit of competitive advantage. Practical implications – The research shows that firms merely locate themselves in the right cluster does not guarantee they can outperform their rivals. Rather, developing of network relationship with other firms proximate to the same cluster will strengthen a firm's competitive advantages. Originality/value – In the theoretical perspective, this paper attempts to fill the gap in the links between clusters, networks, and competitive advantage by providing that the networking as a mechanism for firms in a cluster to improve their competitive advantage.

Investigation of customer participation in new product development (NPD) performance has yielded conflicting results. This study explores the idea that intensive customer participation is not always better. Instead, the usefulness of customer participation in NPD is determined by the fit between product innovativeness and customer participation as information providers and as co-developers. An empirical study of 196 NPD projects of Taiwanese high-tech firms is analyzed by structural equation modeling. The findings show that product innovativeness negatively moderates the impact of customer participation as information providers on NPD outcome. Thus, the greater the involvement of customer participation as information providers in radical innovation projects, the lower the NPD outcome. Moreover, our results also indicate that product innovativeness positively affects the relationship between customer participation as a co-developer and NPD outcome, which suggest that the more customer participation as a co-developer in a radical innovation project, the better the NPD outcome.

The new product development literature offers divergent views of the relationship between innovation speed and project success. Innovation speed, defined as the period of time in which an idea moves from conception to introduction into the marketplace, has an ambiguous relationship with development cost and product quality. While several studies argue for the trade-offs between innovation speed, development cost, and product quality in which accelerating innovation speed may result in inflating costs and sacrificing quality, some research identifies a synergy under which rapid innovation speed may lead to decreasing costs and improving quality. This study provides a framework for addressing these conflicting results. An empirical study of 168 projects of high-tech manufacturers in Taiwan is analysed by structural equation modelling. Our findings show that the impact of innovation speed on project success is mediated by development cost and product quality. In addition, product innovativeness is found to moderate the impacts of innovation speed on development cost and product quality. Implications of the results for theory and managerial practice are offered.

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