Time Versus Market Orientation in Product Concept Development: Empirically-Based Theory Generation

Abstract

AcknowledgementWe are grateful to members and managers of the product development teams for their willingness to share thier time and insights for this project. We also thank: John Carroll, Don Clausing, Steve Graves, Shoji Shiba, John Sterman. Bob Thomas. Karl Ulrich, and David Walden for their constructive criticism and helpful suggestions. AbstractIn collaboration with industry partners, a normative model of the product concept decision process was developed, supported with tools and techniques, and codified as a decision support process for product development teams. This process (Concept Engineering) was then introduced into a number of product development teams in different companies. A comparative analysis of actual product concept development activities, with and without the use of Concept Engineering, was conducted. All of the observed teams viewed time to market as a critical measure of their success. However, the development processes differed significantly depending on whether relatively more emphasis was placed on time or market considerations. Key variables associated with the product concept development decision process and time-to-market dynamics were identified and a theory of the concept development process was developed using the inductive system diagram technique, a research methodology developed in the course of this work.We believe this work contributes to the operations management literature in three ways. First, it introduces a very detailed, structured decision process for product concept development, enhancing the literature on Quality Function Deployement (QFD). Second, it presents a theory of product concept development that can improve understanding of success and failure in product concept development. Third, this work develops new methodology (Inductive Systems Diagrams) for field work in operations management. This methodology marries the grounded theory methods familiar to sociologists with causal-loop modeling familiar to systems dynamicists, yielding a rigorous tool for systematically collecting, organizing, and distilling large amounts of field-based data.

The uses of qualitative data in multimethodology: Developing causal loop diagrams during the coding process

“…It is broadened by reference to similar methods used by (Burchill & Fine, 1997;Morrison, 2003;Repenning & Sterman, 2002) and exhortations from the system dynamics community for integration with qualitative data collection and analysis (Kopainsky & Luna-Reyes, 2008;Luna-Reyes & Andersen, 2003).…”

Understanding fire fighting in new product development⋆

“…A weak or non-existent understanding of what the customer actually wants greatly increases the chance that early designs are not well received, thus generating additional rework. The validity of this assumption is supported by both the prescriptive writings of those who suggest concept development as an important first step in a product development process [9,38] and by extensive empirical study [5,11,17].…”

Groupware architecture for requirements processes in new product development

“…To thrive under these conditions, it is crucial that the company not only helps its personnel become more knowledgeable about the marketplace but also ensures that the accumulated knowledge is fully leveraged [11,15,16,19,24]. This is particularly true during the earliest phases of new product development (NPD) during which different functional organizations need to integrate their expertise in order to develop a credible product definition [2]. Indeed, there is ample evidence that the synthesization of the knowledge possessed by the multiple stakeholders is one of the key determinants of successful product development [3].…”

“…The development activities in large companies are often scattered across multiple sites, which makes it hard to set up face-to-face meetings. At the same time, differences in incentives and organizational culture as well as divergent perceptions about the marketplace and the product's mission may stay in the way of reaching an agreement about the product definition [2]. In this context, the provision of communication support for the early phases of NPD activities thus poses a significant challenge with substantial payoffs.…”

“…Nevertheless, there are only few studies that investigate (1) which processes within NPD are amenable to networked IT solutions, (2) what targets should be set for such solutions, and (3) how these targets can be translated into implementations. In their recent study of the intranetenabled use of product specifications in a large NPD project, Hameri and Nihtilä [7] note that prior research on networked NPD-processes is very limited.…”