Featuring Capability: How Carmakers Organize to Deploy Innovative Features across Products

Strategy orientation, product innovativeness, and new product performance

“…Under higher perceptions of product innovativeness, the need to understand and anticipate customer demands increases for market-oriented innovative projects to generate new product ideas that appropriately respond to customer preferences (Batt, 2002;Joshi & Sharma, 2004;Matting, Sanden, & Edvardsson, 2004;Kibbeling, van der Bij, & van Weele, 2013). From a dynamic capabilities perspective, intense product innovativeness motivates a firm to adopt market-oriented strategies by enabling them to discover customers' unfilled needs and monitor markets to develop new product ideas (Cannon & Homburg, 2001;Verhees & Meulenberg, 2004;Maniak et al, 2014). In other words, increased product innovativeness enhances the development of a new product that fully and accurately reflects customer tastes, thereby increasing the new product's attractiveness and performance of its intended functions.…”

Synchronization of Innovation and Vehicle Projects: Proposal of a Management Tool at Renault SAS

“…The next steps in our research will be to work on other key aspects that may improve the global touchdown process. Also, even if “the automotive sector is particularly relevant for studying the linkages between exploration and new product development” (Maniak et al, ), it would be interesting to extend this research to other industries.…”

“…Beaume et al () proposed a framework describing the interplay between innovative features and new products. They demonstrated that this “is not a linear process which begins with ‘research’ and ends with ‘development,’ but an interplay between product development projects and knowledge activities (from early preparation to standardized application on vehicles).” They insisted on the limits of the off‐the‐shelf metaphor, the need for specific innovation strategy, and the “importance of learning and adaptability capabilities within the vehicle development process […].” Maniak, Midler, Beaume, and Pechmann () described the structural separation between “advanced engineering” departments and operating division. They demonstrate the necessity of specific coordination mechanisms.…”

La genèse d’un centre de R&D à l’international. Le cas de l’industrie automobile

“…Ces activités concernent la recherche amont qui regroupe les activités d'anticipation, de surveillance et d'exploration de nouvelles technologies, la mise au point d'innovations et de solutions éprouvées pour incorporation éventuelle aux nouveaux modèles (Maniak, Midler, Beaume, & Pechmann, 2014) ainsi que les activités d'élaboration de concept, de défini-tion des attributs des nouveaux modèles et de positionnement stratégique sur le marché.…”