Deadlines in Product Development

Zhang, Juanjuan

doi:10.1287/mnsc.2015.2300

Cited by 35 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 63 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…To date no research has paid attention to the question of how rigid or flexible such a stage‐wise timing of an NPD project should be. From a cycle time reduction perspective, making a tight initial time plan for all gates (i.e., a plan to bring to market the new product as fast as possible based on the known tasks at hand) at the very beginning of the NPD project, and sticking to this time plan throughout the project, would be most advantageous (Zhang, ). An advantage of keeping the gate timing fixed is that the time goal for the project is clear from the very beginning, which has been shown to increase NPD project performance (Kessler and Chakrabarti, ; Langerak, Hultink, and Robben, ; Stockstrom and Herstatt, ).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring the Knowns to Manage the Unknown: How to Choose the Gate Timing Strategy in NPD Projects

Oorschot¹,

Eling²,

Langerak³

2017

J of Product Innov Manag

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Stage‐wise timing of new product development (NPD) activities is advantageous for a project's performance. The literature does not, however, specify whether this implies setting and adhering to a fixed schedule of gate meetings from the start of the project or allowing flexibility to adjust the schedule throughout the NPD process. In the initial project plan, managers and/or development teams often underrate the time required to complete the project because of task underestimation. Although the level of task underestimation (i.e., the unknown) is not identifiable at the start of the project, our study argues that project managers and/or teams can manage the unknown by measuring three project conditions (i.e., the knowns) during front‐end execution, and use their values to select the best gate timing strategy. These project conditions entail: (i) the number of unexpected tasks discovered during the front‐end, (ii) the willingness of customers to postpone their purchase in case the execution of these unexpected tasks would lead to a delayed market launch, and (iii) the number of unexpected tasks discovered just before the front‐end gate. Together these conditions determine whether a more fixed or more flexible gate timing strategy is most appropriate to use. The findings of a system dynamics simulation corroborate the supposition that the interplay between the three project conditions measured during front‐end execution determines which of four gate timing strategies with different levels of flexibility (i.e., one fixed, one flexible, and two hybrid forms) maximizes new product profitability. This finding has important implications for both theory and practice as we now comprehend that the knowns can be used to manage the unknown.

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Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring the Knowns to Manage the Unknown: How to Choose the Gate Timing Strategy in NPD Projects

Oorschot¹,

Eling²,

Langerak³

2017

J of Product Innov Manag

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“…), network externality (Sun et al. ), heterogeneous buyer search costs (Kuksov ), uncertain demand (Tyagi ), reference group comparison (Amaldoss and Jain ), varying purchase histories (Zhang ), endogenous deliberation (Guo and Zhang ), stringent deadlines (Zhang ), and so on. We add to this literature by investigating how a manufacturer should design a new product when a brick‐and‐mortar retailer expands online.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Product Design under Channel Acceptance: Brick‐and‐Mortar, Online‐Exclusive, or Brick‐and‐Click

Luo

Sun

2016

Production and Operations Management

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In recent years, an increasing number of brick‐and‐mortar retailers have entered into the new brick‐and‐click era. Within this context, when a manufacturer presents a new product offering to a retailer, the ultimate decision is often made by the retailer regarding (1) whether to carry the new product, and (2) the channel outlet the product will be carried in (i.e., in‐store only, online‐exclusive, or brick‐and‐click). In response to this trend, we examine how a manufacturer may use product design to influence a dual‐channel retailer's outlet designation decision. This is the first study to investigate a manufacturer's optimal product design strategy when a brick‐and‐mortar retailer expands online. We demonstrate that, to induce the retailer to carry a new product both offline and online, it may not always be optimal for the manufacturer to enhance product quality (compared with when the retailer only operates offline). With the online store addition, the retailer may also be incentivized to adjust his participation criterion to a level less than what is determined by his outside option.

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“…We focus on examining which forms of project contracts can coordinate the CCPM method optimally. A deadline benefits the firm by eliminating the agent's dynamic incentives to shirk and lowering the firm's payroll costs (Zhang, 2014). The whole duration of a task is divided into two stages based on the buffer design strategy in CCPM; the early stage contains the setting of 50% probability of successful completion for each task, the later stage equals to the project buffer focused on the single task.…”

Section: Basic Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two staged incentive contract focused on efficiency and innovation matching in critical chain project management

Zhang

Jin

2014

JIEM

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This paper analyzes a two staged incentive contract coordinated with efficiency and innovation in Critical Chain Project Management using learning real options, based on principle-agent theory. The situational experiment is used to detect the validity check of this basic model. Finding: The two staged incentive scheme is more suitable for employees to create and implement learning real options, which will throw themselves into innovation process efficiently in the situation of Critical Chain Project Management. We prove that the combination of tolerance for early failure and reward for long-term success is effective in motivating innovation.

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Deadlines in Product Development

Cited by 35 publications

References 63 publications

Measuring the Knowns to Manage the Unknown: How to Choose the Gate Timing Strategy in NPD Projects

Measuring the Knowns to Manage the Unknown: How to Choose the Gate Timing Strategy in NPD Projects

New Product Design under Channel Acceptance: Brick‐and‐Mortar, Online‐Exclusive, or Brick‐and‐Click

Two staged incentive contract focused on efficiency and innovation matching in critical chain project management

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