This empirical study of 323 new ventures examines how task and relationship conflict in the founding top management team mediates the effect of lead founder personality on new venture performance. The results reveal that (1) openness and agreeableness increase task conflict, whereas conscientiousness decreases it, and (2) openness, extraversion, and conscientiousness decrease relationship conflict, whereas neuroticism increases it. Furthermore, task conflict increases venture performance, whereas relationship conflict decreases venture performance and weakens the positive effect of task conflict. In addition, task and relationship conflict do not mediate the effect of extraversion, and they only partially mediate the effects of openness and neuroticism on new venture performance. Openness and neuroticism exert a direct impact on new venture performance, in addition to their indirect impact through task and relationship conflict.

Does strategic planning enhance or impede innovation and firm performance? The current literature provides contradictory views. This study extends the resource-advantage theory to examine the conditions in which strategic planning increases or decreases the number of new product development projects and firm performance. The authors test the theoretical model by collecting data from 227 firms.The empirical evidence suggests that more strategic planning and more new product development (NPD) projects lead to better firm performance. Firms with organizational redundancy benefit more from strategic planning than firms with less organizational redundancy. Increasing R&D intensity boosts both the number of NPD projects and firm performance. Strategic planning is more effective in larger firms with higher R&D intensity for increasing the number of NPD projects. The results reported in this study also consist of several findings that challenge the traditional views of strategic planning. The evidence suggests that strategic planning impedes, not enhances, the number of NPD projects. Larger firms benefit less, not more, from strategic planning for improving firm performance. Larger firms do not necessarily create more NPD projects. Increasing organizational redundancy has no effect on the number of NPD projects.These empirical results provide important strategic implications. First, managers should be aware that, in general, formal strategic planning decreases the number of NPD projects for innovation management. Improvised rather than planned activities are more conducive to creating NPD project ideas. Moreover, innovations tend to emerge from improvisational processes, during which the impromptu execution of NPD activities without planning spurs ''thinking outside the box,'' which enhances the process of creating NPD project ideas. Therefore, more flexible strategic plans that accommodate potential improvisation may be needed in NPD management since innovation-related activities cannot be planned precisely due to the unexpected jolts and contingencies of the NPD process.Second, large firms with high levels of R&D intensity can overcome the negative effect of strategic planning on the number of NPD projects. Specifically, a firm's abundant resources, when allocated and deployed for NPD activities, signal the high priority and importance of the NPD activities and thus motivate employees to acquire, collect, and gather customer and technical knowledge, which leads to creating more NPD projects.Finally, managers must understand that managing strategic planning and generating NPD project ideas are beneficial to the ultimate outcome of firm performance despite the adverse relationship between strategic planning and the number of NPD projects. IntroductionG reater emphasis on the importance of increasing new product development (NPD) projects has emerged because globalization and hypercompetition essentially demand that increasing NPD projects can ''reinvent the wheel'' for organizational innovations (von Krogh, Nonaka, and N...

The effective integration of research and development (R&D) and marketing contributes to the development of successful new products. Barriers such as physical separation of R&D and marketing, goal incongruity, and cultural differences hamper the cross-functional cooperation. However, it may not be either possible or desirable to eliminate the cross-functional integration barriers in practice. Previous research findings suggest that information technology (IT) can be used to reduce the negative impact of the barriers. This paper examines the moderating role of communication technologies (ITc) and decision-aiding technologies (ITd) in improving the R&D-marketing integration in new product development. The empirical findings from analyzing data on 171 new product development projects suggest that both IT systems can be used to reduce the negative impact of physical separation, goal incongruity, and cultural differences on R&D-marketing integration. However, effectiveness of the two types of IT differs. While IT c appears to be more effective than IT d in overcoming the constraint of physical separation, IT d is more effective than IT c in reducing the negative impact of goal incongruity and cultural differences. IT c is found to have the strongest effect on reducing the negative relationship of physical separation and integration, a less strong effect on cultural differences, and a weak effect on goal incongruity. Conversely, IT d is found to have a strong effect on goal incongruity. These empirical findings provide guidelines for project managers using a specific IT to address a specific integration barrier. If the major barrier is physical separation, IT c is the best solution. On the other hand, if the major barrier is goal incongruity, IT d is the best solution. In addition, it is important for management to note that IT requires more than simply installing computer hardware and software. In addition to investing in those ''hard'' improvements, project managers should strive to create a supportive ''soft'' environment by consistently improving members' IT experiences and familiarity. In the process of the continuous development of IT, state-ofthe-art technologies should be introduced in a timely manner and be made accessible to all team members. Finally, project managers should frequently observe their industry peers' IT usage to keep up with advances.

Pioneering advantage in manufacturing firms has received much attention in the management and marketing literature. Few research studies, however, have been conducted to investigate the pioneering advantages and disadvantages involved in new service development, especially across several geographic regions. We build a theoretical framework of pioneering advantage in service industries based on the distinguishing characteristics of services. From this framework, we develop a set of testable propositions about the importance of several types of pioneering advantage (economic, preemptive, technological, and behavioral advantages) to service managers. Specifically, we propose that all of these types of pioneering advantages are important to service managers, and that these managers perceive that pioneering results in improved firm performance. We also propose that, due to the distinguishing characteristics of services such as intangibility and heterogeneity, service managers will not perceive the risks of pioneering in a service industry to be severe. In addition, we propose that certain types of pioneering advantage will be more important to service managers in Western countries than in Asian Pacific countries due to cultural and business environmental differences. In particular, we propose that service managers from Western firms perceive preemptive advantages of pioneering to be more important than do their Asian Pacific counterparts, and service managers from Asian Pacific firms perceive behavioral advantages of pioneering to be more important than do their Western counterparts. To test our propositions empirically, we develop a set of pioneering principles from the literature. We then collect and analyze data from a sample of 982 senior managers in service industries from nine countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong,1 South Korea, and Singapore. We find evidence of several significant cross‐cultural differences consistent with our propositions. In fact, seven of the eight propositions are strongly or partially supported. The only nonsupported proposition concerned the importance of technological advantage. We find that technological advantages of pioneering are much less important to service managers than are other pioneering advantages. We conclude with strategic recommendations for managers involved in new service development and international or global competition, and provide directions for future research. We note that the insights from this study can help managers from both the West and the Asian Pacific region to better understand their global competitors who pursue a new service pioneering strategy, and can potentially help them select entry deterrence strategies more effectively.

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Microfrac or fall off injection test is a technique used to accurately measure minimum horizontal stress directly in the formation. However, other than being expensive and time consuming, this test does not give a continuous minimum horizontal stress profile. Continuous minimum horizontal stress profile is especially important for hydraulic fracturing design for the tight Montney formation. This study utilizes logging data and core reports to generate the minimum horizontal stress profile for two Montney wells in North East British Columbia. Specific value of tectonic stress determined from injection fall off analysis is also included in the calculation. The first method, conventional method, calculates minimum horizontal stress by solving linear poroelasticity equations with vertical stress equal to the overburden. Closure pressure from fall-off injection test is used as a calibration point to acquire tectonic stress. The second method incorporates the tectonic, thermal effect and rock mechanical properties at each incremental depth to generate the minimum horizontal stress. The third method, vertical transverse isotropy (VTI), is conducted assuming different rock properties on the vertical and horizontal direction and also different tectonic strain for the maximum and minimum direction. The conventional method yields the lowest minimum horizontal stress magnitude without any distinctive characteristic. On several zones, the VTI method shows higher stress magnitude above Montney and reveals some good zone containment for hydraulic fracturing design, which the conventional method does not provide. From the injection fall off analysis, a second closure pressure with lower value than the first closure is believed to represent the overburden stress. It is concluded that this area has a thrust fault regime in which overburden stress is the least principle stress.

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Entrepreneurial ventures have a significant impact on new job creation and economic growth, but existing evidence indicates that most entrepreneurial ventures fail. This paper reports key insights from VENSURV, a new database that tracks the success and failure of ventures founded since 1998. Based on an analysis of 539 new ventures founded during the years 1991-2001, the following conclusions are reached. First, consistent with prior research, less than half of the 539 ventures survived more than two years. Second, economic downturns lead to higher failure rates for new ventures. Third, new venture success is highly correlated with first-product success. Fourth, first-product success is enhanced when those products are introduced into markets with emerging market needs but with established industry standards. Finally, first-product and venture performance are significantly higher for products based on ideas that came from the founders. In addition, the most successful first products are based on ideas that reflect both technology development and an analysis of customer needs. a Performance was measured on an 11-point scale from 0 to 10. Ã Indicates means are significantly different at the 90% confidence level. 132 J PROD INNOV MANAG 2010;27:130-135 L. Z. SONG ET AL.