Anders Richtnér

Top management control and knowledge creation in new product development

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of top management control in stimulating innovation through their effect on the creation of knowledge in new product development (NPD) projects. Top management has a crucial role in stimulating innovation in companies, in particular as top managers affect knowledge creation through their interaction with project teams before and during an NPD project, which can of course affect innovation.Design/methodology/approach – Through comparative case‐based research in two companies in high‐velocity industries, chosen through theoretical sampling, the authors have studied six NPD projects.Findings – The control top management exercise over an NPD project influences the creation of knowledge in different ways, both hampering and facilitating knowledge creation. In particular, this control focuses on explicit knowledge, and not tacit knowledge, which may reduce the overall capacity for knowledge creation and ultimately innovation.Research limitations/implica...

Managing Process Development: Key Issues and Dimensions in the Front End

Beyond the traditional focus on product innovation, prior research and practical examples from a variety of industrial settings underscore the importance of the early phases of process development and process innovation. Despite the potential for large cost savings and efficiency gains, however, little is known about what firms actually do in the early design and concept creation phases of process development, and what guides their subsequent formal process development efforts. By means of a longitudinal multiple case study of four large companies, we bridge this gap by conceptualizing a ‘process definition’. This process definition includes a process concept and is the ‘process equivalent’ of a product definition. Our analysis shows that firms create such process definitions through iterative trial-and-error processes, in which experiments, environmental scanning, and administrative planning constitute key methods for uncertainty reduction. Mainstream theory on product definitions fails to account for the key dimensions of a process definition. On the contrary, dimensions such as the understanding of production needs, assessment of product consequences, a thorough implementation plan and early anticipation of intended outcomes, constitute key dimensions of a successful process definition. These findings are particularly relevant to process development managers, plant managers, and others interested in process development and management of production processes.

Influences On Organisational Slack In New Product Development Projects

Programs to decrease cost and to increase operational efficiency may reduce a companys ability to innovate, by reducing organisational slack. Previous research on the relationship between organisational slack and innovation has been at level of the firm and has neglected the processes underlying the relationship, which takes place at the level of product development projects. In this paper, we identify organisational slack and its influences at the level of the product development project. Through exploratory case research in high-velocity industries, two influences on organisational slack are identified: customer interaction and top management control. We also identify two categories of organisational slack at the product development project level: project deliverables and human competences. The two influencing variables and the two categories of organisational slack all have an effect on the knowledge creation taking place inside the projects and therefore ultimately innovation.

SIMILAR, YET DIFFERENT: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE ROLE OF TRUST IN RADICAL AND INCREMENTAL PRODUCT INNOVATION

Trust within teams is a central performance driver in product innovation. In this paper, we examine the antecedents to and performance implications of trust in firms engaged in radical innovation compared to those working towards incremental innovations. Our findings suggest that systematic processes and structures are significantly linked to trust in firms conducting radical innovation, but not so in firms conducting incremental innovation. Our findings also indicate that trust is significantly linked to business performance in radical innovation firms, although we do not find that the link between trust and performance is stronger for radical innovation firms, compared to incremental innovation firms. A central contribution of our study is therefore a better understanding of how trust operates differently in radical innovation firms, compared to incremental innovation firms. Our findings are of interest to research on radical innovation management, as well as to researchers studying the role of trust in a context of product innovation.

What parameters do students value in business school rankings

The starting point of this paper is the question: Which issues do students think are important when choosing a higher education institution, and how are they related to the factors taken into consideration in ranking institutions? The aim is to identify and rank the parameters students perceive as important when choosing their place of education. The paper is based on a qualitative pre-study and a quantitative main study in which the authors examine what students perceive as important in business school rankings. Our findings show that, by taking the students’ perspective into account, one can see that some of the parameters used in rankings are of less importance to the students: for example, rankings that over-emphasise research. Second, we identify the parameters that could be included in business school rankings to make them more relevant to students: for example, paying more attention to learning outputs in rankings. Our findings highlight the importance of taking individual stakeholders into account in the rankings and understanding how rankings could be made more relevant and valuable for the range of stakeholders.

REAPING THE BENEFITS: MECHANISMS FOR KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER IN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT COLLABORATION

Research on knowledge transfer has predominantly focused on how to transfer source knowledge successfully to a recipient. However, there is a lack of studies on product development (PD) collaborations where the parties involved in the knowledge transfer must all jointly contribute to the knowledge transfer process when no clear sender–receiver relationship exists. Our paper concerns these relationships and is guided by the following research question: What are the mechanisms used in order to create operational level conditions for knowledge transfer in collaborative PD projects?Through a three-year longitudinal inductive case study on knowledge transfer between two companies, covering both operational and managerial levels, five key mechanisms for enabling knowledge transfer were identified: (1) co-locate a team; (2) access to existing technology; (3) establish a common vocabulary; (4) shared work processes; and (5) having joint work tasks. Our results show these five mechanisms have a mutual influence on each other, thus further facilitating the transfer of knowledge. Understanding the mechanisms and their interplay can help companies succeed in their attempts at reaping the benefits of PD collaborations.

Organizational interfaces for knowledge integration in product development collaborations

Through an inductive case study over three years of two product development collaborations, we identified how four organizational interfaces play out over time and how they are related to each other. This study therefore contributes to our understanding of how organizational interfaces evolve and their mutual dependencies in shaping conditions for knowledge integration. Our study extends previous work on organizational interfaces that have either focused on interfaces within the organization or focused on one or two organizational interfaces and their link to knowledge integration without considering the enabling conditions. Our longitudinal approach helps to understand how organizational interfaces play out over time and how they interact and influence each other. Our research helps managers to ask the right questions about how they can design preconditions for knowledge integration in product development collaborations.

‘Untangling Absorptive Capacity’ – The Salient Context of Projects

This paper advances the understanding of absorptive capacity by disentangling its four distinct sub-dimensions. Most of the studies in extant literature have treated absorptive capacity as unidimensional concept and as a firm-level construct without paying due attention to its organizational antecedents. Based on the observation that deliberated inter-unit knowledge transfer processes are mostly executed through projects in practice, we suggest that project specific characteristics (i.e., task, time and team) should be considered as salient and relevant antecedents of absorptive capacity. In that regard, we discuss how scope of task, composition of team and perceptions of time have varying and somewhat conflicting effects on acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation dimensions of absorptive capacity.