Critical success factors in early new product development: a review and a conceptual model

Abstract

The literature on the front end in the New Product Development (NPD) literature is fragmented with respect to the identification and analysis of the factors that are critical to successful product development. The article has a two-fold purpose. First, it describes, analyses, and synthesizes those factors through a literature review of the research on the front end in NPD. Second, it conceptualizes a framework that features two types of success factors: foundational success factors (common to all the firm's projects) and project-specific success factors (appropriate for the firm's individual projects). The article makes recommendations for the management of this important phase of product development, discusses limitations of relevant previous research, and offers suggestions for future research. The article makes a theoretical contribution with its analysis and synthesis of the reasons for success in front-end activities and a practical contribution with its conceptual framework that can be used as an analytical tool by firms and their product managers.

Idea generation and open innovation in SMEs: When does market‐based collaboration pay off most?

“…Researchers have devoted considerable attention to understanding the sources of success in idea generation by, for example, identifying core activities and success factors (Florén, Frishammar, Parida, & Wincent, 2018;Khurana & Rosenthal, 1997;Velamuri, Schneckenberg, Haller, & Moeslein, 2017). Koen, Ajamian, Burkart, and Clamen (2001) describe idea generation as an activity in which ideas are progressively built upon, torn down, refined, reshaped, adapted and advanced.…”

Managing collaborative ideation: the role of formal and informal appropriability mechanisms

“…Bogers and Horst (2014), conducted an inductive study to investigate how collaborative activities across functional, hierarchical, and organizational boundaries can improve the overall collaborative process. The findings suggest that collaborative activities are used as a critical success factor, thereby serving as a platform for the cross-fertilization of knowledge in the early stages of new product development (Florén et al 2017;Gama et al 2017).…”

The Identification of Opportunities for Innovations through Collecting Problems from Citizens

“…Whether the opportunity identification be a top-down or bottom-up process is becoming a topical issue being discussed by scholars [5]. Opinions on the importance of customer engagement in the creation and development of innovative ideas, products, and services contradict each other, as they bring to light both positive and negative effects of customer engagement [6][7][8]. The majority of scholars emphasize the important role of customers in giving insight into their needs, and in the co-thinking and co-creating, thus directing the actions of companies towards useful innovation and new value creation [9][10][11][12][13][14].…”

“…Ideas which might bring about valuable innovation could be given by customers-just ordinary people who might be pivotal sources of knowledge and whose participation helps translate their needs into new products [6,[9][10][11]13,14,[18][19][20].…”

“…When there are problems and needs, people are forced to invent ways for solving them. That means, a problem-driven approach may always bring to some useful ideas and innovation opportunities [6,[21][22][23]. Useful ideas for innovation in this paper are understood as ideas for such innovations which meet people's needs and do not cause negative externalities that result in social costs out weighing the private gains [24].…”