Jiyao Chen

The impacts of speed-to-market on new product success: the moderating effects of uncertainty

Time-based strategy is becoming an important weapon to achieve competitive advantage in the current environment of fast-changing technology and customer requirements. Speed-to-market has become the mantra of both researchers and practitioners in new product development (NPD), but there are limited and conflicting findings on the relationship between speed-to-market and product success. A more important question is whether faster is always better. In a study of 692 NPD projects, we examined the relationship between speed-to-market and new product success (NPS) under different conditions of uncertainty. Our results indicate that speed-to-market is generally positively associated with overall NPS, but market uncertainty moderates the direct effect. Speed-to-market is less important to NPS under conditions of low market uncertainty. Our results also suggest that technological uncertainty does not affect the speed-success relationship. The implication is that it is more important to execute a time-based strategy in an unfamiliar, emerging, or fast-changing market than in a familiar, existing, and stable market. The limitations and future research related to these results are discussed.

New Product Development Speed: Too Much of a Good Thing?

New product development (NPD) speed has become increasingly important for managing innovation in fast-changing business environments due to continuous reduction in the product life cycle time and increase in competition from technological advancements and globalization. While the existing literature has not produced consistent results regarding the relationship between speed and success for NPD projects, many scholars and practitioners assert that increasing NPD speed is virtually always important to NPD success. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implicit assumption that faster is better as it relates to new product success (NPS). From the perspectives of time-compression diseconomies and absorptive capacity, the authors question the assumption that speed has a linear relationship with success. The authors further argue that time-compression diseconomies depend on levels of uncertainty involved in NPD projects. Using survey data of 471 NPD projects, the hypotheses were tested by hierarchical regression analysis and subgroup polynomial regression. The results of this study indicate that NPD speed has a curvilinear relationship with NPS, and the nature of the speed–success relationship varies, depending on type and level of uncertainty. When turbulence or technological newness is high, the relationship is curvilinear, but when uncertainties are low, the relationship is linear. In contrast, the results of this study suggest a curvilinear relationship under conditions of low market newness but not when market newness is high. The present paper asserts that time-compression diseconomies and absorptive capacity are important theoretical constructs in understanding speed in NPD. The different impact of market newness and market turbulence on NPD speed supports the distinction of newness and turbulence as two different sources of uncertainty. Discussion focuses on the implications of NPD speed under the different conditions of uncertainty. NPD teams need to pursue NPD speed as a critical strategy, but it is necessary to analyze the source and degree of uncertainty about projects before a time-based strategy is selected. In order to address the challenges of high uncertainty, a firm needs to probe, learn, and iterate fast. In particular, NPD teams need to distinguish between the different requirements for new products in emerging and new markets, and those in fast-changing markets. Moreover, NPD teams need to balance how fast they need to go with how fast they can go by considering team absorptive capacity and customer absorptive capacity.

Power and empowerment: the role of top management support and team empowerment in new product development

Although recent empirical research shows the value of empowerment and top management support (TMS) for new product development (NPD) efforts, it remains an open question as to whether empowerment and TMS are always beneficial for NPD performance. In a study of a large number of NPD projects we examined this question by (1) assessing the direct contributions of empowerment and TMS to speed and success in NPD, and (2) examining the potential moderating influence of uncertainty on the effects of empowerment and TMS. Our results indicated that empowerment is positively associated with NPD speed under all conditions of uncertainty, but is more highly correlated with overall project success when uncertainty is high than when it is low. TMS is positively associated with both NPD speed and success regardless of uncertainty, but we found some suggestions that sponsorship is less important for speed-to-market in more certain environments, particularly when NPD projects are routine incremental innovations. Our study also indicates technological uncertainty and market uncertainty have a different moderating impact on the relationship between team empowerment and NPD success. The implications of these findings for a contingency-oriented view of NPD practices are discussed.

Customer-Oriented Innovation and Firm Performance

The service-dominant logic of marketing suggests that customer-oriented innovation should be an essential focus for any firm; however, there is limited literature on the relative impact of customer-oriented innovation on firm performance in comparison with other dimensions of innovation. We integrate the service-dominant logic of marketing with the resource-based view of strategy to examine the relative importance of customer-oriented innovation on firm performance. By analyzing data from 765 managers from 52 business units of 19 large U.S. corporations, we find that customer-oriented innovation and offering-oriented innovation are both significantly associated with firm performance, while operations-oriented innovation is not. We discuss the implications of our findings for the service-dominant logic of marketing, resource-based view of strategy and measurement of innovation.

Autonomous teams and new product development

How should a company organize a project team to develop new products? This study examined the relative effectiveness of four types of team structures by comparing the performance of 559 development projects in terms of development cost, new product development speed, and product commercial success. The results indicate that in general, autonomous team structure is superior to other team structures, especially in dealing with high technology projects or developing radical innovation products.

The role of improvisation in entrepreneurial processes

Previous literature indicates a paradox in the planning-performance relationship in new ventures; both positive and negative relationships can be found. As a contribution to resolve this issue, we propose an improvisational perspective in this paper. First, we introduce the idea of improvisation as a reflective and cyclic process. We suggest that improvisation is not the opposite of planning but rather a variation in the nature and working mechanism of planning. Second, we explain how improvisation fits into entrepreneurial processes. Finally, we discuss how environmental uncertainty may have an impact on the relationship between improvisation and new venture performance.

The critical factors for improving companies~ abilities to develop new product faster and more successfully

By studying a variety of practices of eighty-nine divisions/companies, we identified several factors that contribute to the effective development of new products. The findings show that vision clarity and empowerment are two key practices influencing organization level success in new product development. ∗