Harry Commandeur

Understanding new product project performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to summarize the accumulated body of knowledge on the performance of new product projects and provide directions for further research.Design/methodology/approach – Using a refined classification of antecedents of new product project performance the research results are meta‐analyzed in the literature in order to identify the strength and stability of predictor‐performance relationships.Findings – The results reveal that 22 variables have a significant relationship with new product project performance, of which only 12 variables have a sizable relationship. In order of importance these factors are the degree of organizational interaction, R&D and marketing interface, general product development proficiency, product advantage, financial/business analysis, technical proficiency, management skill, marketing proficiency, market orientation, technology synergy, project manager competency and launch activities. Of the 34 variables 16 predictors show potential for moderator ...

Restructuring European supply chains by implementing postponement strategies

More demanding customer needs in terms of quality, variety, delivery (both fast and reliable), and competitive pricing challenge an increasing number of companies to restructure their supply chains. An appealing option is to delay, or postpone, the point of product differentiation, that is deferring the process in which products are transformed according to unique customer specifications. Advances in technology and the gradual removal of barriers to trade in Europe increasingly enable companies to apply postponement principles in their supply chain strategies. In this article, we provide an in-depth analysis of the experiences of four companies in managing the change process associated with implementing such strategies. Operating and organizational characteristics are identified to assess the attractiveness of postponement in their specific business settings. It was found that in particular, an organization’s administrative heritage and the lack of an overall supply chain vision can be major bottlenecks in managing the change process. For a successful implementation of postponement, a company’s management should establish the appropriate mix of standardization and customization in the supply chain. Differences in the internal organization and the external demands for product specificity require different postponement strategies.

The impact of quality on store loyalty : A contingency approach

This studys prime interest is to assist retail managers in deciding where they are likely to get the greatest response to their expenditures on quality improvement. An empirical test involving 287 consumers reporting on a wide array of stores assesses whether the relationship between three quality dimensions (technical quality, functional quality and relational quality) and store loyalty is moderated by age, gender and store size. The structural equation model indicates that relational quality is the prime driver of store loyalty, seemingly overruling the impact of technical quality and functional quality. Most importantly, the results suggest that older consumers are relatively more strongly affected by technical quality than younger consumers. Another interesting finding is that retailers reap more benefits from their quality investments if they offer relational quality to female as opposed to male consumers. Store size was not found to mitigate the impact of the quality dimensions investigated.

Value Creation and Value Claiming in Strategic Outsourcing Decisions: A Resource Contingency Perspective

This study integrates the concepts of value creation and value claiming into a theoretical framework that emphasizes the dependence of resource value maximization on value-claiming motivations in outsourcing decisions. To test this theoretical framework, it develops refutable implications to explain the firms outsourcing decision, and it uses data from 178 firms in the publishing and printing industry on outsourcing of application services. The results show that in outsourcing decisions, resource value and transaction costs are simultaneously considered and that outsourcing decisions are dependent on alignment between resource and transaction attributes. The findings support a resource contingency view that highlights value-claiming mechanisms as resource contingency in interorganizational strategic decisions.

Risk in Vaccine Research and Development Quantified

To date, vaccination is the most cost-effective strategy to combat infectious diseases. Recently, a productivity gap affects the pharmaceutical industry. The productivity gap describes the situation whereby the invested resources within an industry do not match the expected product turn-over. While risk profiles (combining research and development timelines and transition rates) have been published for new chemical entities (NCE), little is documented on vaccine development. The objective is to calculate risk profiles for vaccines targeting human infectious diseases. A database was actively compiled to include all vaccine projects in development from 1998 to 2009 in the pre-clinical development phase, clinical trials phase I, II and III up to Market Registration. The average vaccine, taken from the preclinical phase, requires a development timeline of 10.71 years and has a market entry probability of 6%. Stratification by disease area reveals pandemic influenza vaccine targets as lucrative. Furthermore, vaccines targeting acute infectious diseases and prophylactic vaccines have shown to have a lower risk profile when compared to vaccines targeting chronic infections and therapeutic applications. In conclusion; these statistics apply to vaccines targeting human infectious diseases. Vaccines targeting cancer, allergy and autoimmune diseases require further analysis. Additionally, this paper does not address orphan vaccines targeting unmet medical needs, whether projects are in-licensed or self-originated and firm size and experience. Therefore, it remains to be investigated how these - and other - variables influence the vaccine risk profile. Although we find huge differences between the risk profiles for vaccine and NCE; vaccines outperform NCE when it comes to development timelines.

The gold industry standard for risk and cost of drug and vaccine development revisited

Gold dimensions of pharmaceutical drug development indicate that it takes on average 11.9 years, with an investment around US

Food-Pharma Convergence in Medical Nutrition - Best of Both Worlds?

0.8 Billion, to launch one product on the market. Furthermore, approximately 22% of the drug candidates successfully complete clinical testing. These universally acknowledged proportions largely originate from one single, much cited publication; Dimasi et al. [5]. However an additional six articles describing new chemical entities (NCE) development were identified, which contain little, if any, information on vaccines. Published cumulative success rates range from 7% to 78% and investments calculations span US

Business Domain Definition Practice: Does it Affect Organisational Performance?

0.8 to 1.7 Billion. Obviously this disserves further clarification?

The Opening and Reading Behavior of Business-to-Business Direct Mail

At present, industries within the health and life science sector are moving towards one another resulting in new industries such as the medical nutrition industry. Medical nutrition products are specific nutritional compositions for intervention in disease progression and symptom alleviation. Industry convergence, described as the blurring of boundaries between industries, plays a crucial role in the shaping of new markets and industries. Assuming that the medical nutrition industry has emerged from the convergence between the food and pharma industries, it is crucial to research how and which distinct industry domains have contributed to establish this relatively new industry. The first two stages of industry convergence (knowledge diffusion and consolidation) are measured by means of patent analysis. First, the extent of knowledge diffusion within the medical nutrition industry is graphed in a patent citation interrelations network. Subsequently the consolidation based on technological convergence is determined by means of patent co-classification. Furthermore, the medical nutrition core domain and technology interrelations are measured by means of a cross impact analysis. This study proves that the medical nutrition industry is a result of food and pharma convergence. It is therefore crucial for medical nutrition companies to effectively monitor technological developments within as well as across industry boundaries. This study further reveals that although the medical nutrition industry’s core technology domain is food, technological development is mainly driven by pharmaceutical/pharmacological technologies Additionally, the results indicate that the industry has surpassed the knowledge diffusion stage of convergence, and is currently in the consolidation phase of industry convergence. Nevertheless, while the medical nutrition can be classified as an industry in an advanced phase of convergence, one cannot predict that the pharma and food industry segments will completely converge or whether the medical industry will become an individual successful industry.

Patient needs and research priorities in the enteral nutrition market – A quantitative prioritization analysis

Abstract How do organisations conceptualise their business domain, in other words, their competitive boundaries, and how can this influence their strategic choices and performance. This article finds that delineating competitive boundaries relatively narrowly, with an organisations technological competencies as the reference point, is positively associated with sales growth in turbulent industries. In contrast, in stable industries, conceptualising competitive boundaries relatively broadly to circumscribe substitute product organisations is positively correlated with sales growth. Additionally, results suggest that in both environment types, explicitly articulating what the business domain of an organisation is leads to superior performance. Management implications are drawn.