An Examination of Organizational Factors Influencing New Product Success in Internal and Alliance-Based Processes

Abstract

New products provide increased sales, profits, and competitive strength for most organizations. However, nearly 50% of the new products that are introduced each year fail. Organizations thus find themselves in a double bind. On the one hand they must innovate consistently to remain competitive, but on the other hand innovation is risky and expensive. Many organizations are forming business alliances to quicken the pace of and reduce risks associated with innovation. Yet by some estimates, 70% of these alliances fail. Many of the prescriptions for successful alliance management clash with recommendations for effective innovation management. The authors develop testable hypotheses by integrating the new products and alliance literature. A construct-cooperative competency-derived from related concepts of mutual adjustment, absorptive capacity, and relational capability is posited as the key factor affecting new product development success, regardless of whether it is an intra-or interfirm endeavor. The authors test the model with data from a sample survey in the semiconductor manufacturing context and replicate it in the health care sector. The antecedents of cooperative competency-formalized and clannish administration, mutual dependence, and institutional support-are revealed empirically and substantiated. The authors identify the importance and means of developing interfirm cooperation.

The Mediating Effects of Customer and Competitor Orientations on New Product Success

“…In order to fully capture the essential features and multidimensional aspects of the four variables, every single variable was measured by the use of multi-item scales (Hoegl & Gemuenden, 2001;Song & Montoya-Weiss, 2001;Sivadas & Dwyer, 2000;Olson, Walker, & Ruekert, 1995). To capture the essence of R&D-marketing cooperation as the model's only independent variable, items used by Rodriguez, et al (2008) were adopted.…”

Collaborative Capability of Teams in Network Organizations

“…Trust is the basis for effective communication among network partners, thus facilitating knowledge creation and innovation in networks [7]. Building relationships which are based on mutual trust seems to be one of the most important tasks in inter-firm collaboration [1,8,9,10,11,12].…”

“…Of course this kind of "caring" for a professional relationship is closely related to economic gains. As Sivadas and Dwyer [12] pointed out, partners enter into a strategic alliance to maximize their own gains. If gains are made at the expense of others, and are perceived as deceit, the relationship will be negatively affected.…”

“…Sivadas & Dwyer [12] suggest that complementary competences of partners will be beneficiary whereas competition among partners should be largely ruled out. In network organizations, direct competition acted detrimental to the establishment of collaborative capability, since network partners sought to increase their competitive advantage and to remain independent at the same time.…”

International Co-operation between Firms on Innovation and R&D: Empirical Evidence from Argentina and Spain

“…A recent research realised by Vega-Jurado et al (2008) with a sample of 329 Spanish manufacturing firms shows that the development of inhouse R&D activities is the principal innovation strategy, while R&D contracting and cooperation with external agents has not significant effect on firm's innovative performance. In addition, inter-firm co-operations are reported to encounter high failure rates (Dans and Teng, 2000;Sivadas and Dwyer, 2000;Bönte and Keilbach, 2005). Das and Teng (2000) account that their literature survey, comprised of 16 empirical studies, leads to the conclusion that less than half of the alliances studied can be said to have performed satisfactorily.…”