Critical Factors for New Product Developments in SMEs' Virtual Team

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are considered as an engine for economic growth all over the world and especially for developing countries. During the past decade, new product development (NPD) has increasingly been recognized as a critical factor in ensuring the continued survival of SMEs. On the other hand, the rapid rate of market and technological changes has accelerated in the past decade, so this turbulent environment requires new methods and techniques to bring successful new products to the marketplace. Virtual team can be a solution to answer the requested demand. However, literature have shown no significant differences between traditional NPD and virtual NPD in general, whereas NPD in SME’s virtual team has not been systematically investigated in developing countries. This paper aims to bridge this gap by first reviewing the NPD and its relationship with virtuality and then identifies the critical factors of NPD in virtual teams. The statistical method was utilized to perform the required analysis of data from the survey. The results were achieved through factor analysis at the perspective of NPD in some Malaysian and Iranian manufacturing firms (N = 191). The 20 new product development factors were grouped into five higher level constructs. It gives valuable insight and guidelines, which hopefully will help managers of firms in developing countries to consider the main factors in NPD

Virtual Collaborative R&D Teams in Malaysia Manufacturing SMEs

This paper presents the results of empirical research conducted during March to September 2009. The study focused on the influence of virtual research and development (R&D) teams within Malaysian manufacturing small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The specific objective of the study is better understanding of the application of collaborative technologies in business, to find the effective factors to assist SMEs to remain competitive in the future. The paper stresses to find an answer for a question “Is there any relationship between company size, Internet connection facility and virtuality?”. The survey data shows SMEs are now technologically capable of performing the virtual collaborative team, but the infrastructure usage is less. SMEs now have the necessary technology to begin the implementation process of collaboration tools to reduce research and development (R&D) time, costs and increase productivity. So, the manager of R&D should take the potentials of virtual teams into account

Virtual teams: a new opportunity to develop a business

Virtual teams give many advantages to organizations, including increased knowledge sharing and improve organizational performance. Virtual teams have altered the expectations and boundaries of knowledge worker?s interactions and make a new opportunity to develop the business. In this paper, we present summary results of an online survey. The online questionnaire was emailed by using a simple random sampling method to 356 Malaysian manufacturing small and medium ?sized Enterprises (SMEs). The findings of this study show that SMEs in Malaysia are gaining to use virtual teams, and it can be concluded that virtual teams provide a new platform for developing the business in SMEs. Based on the study, we suggest avenues for future research that are important to advancing our understanding of virtual team effects on business growth

Envisages of New Product Developments in Small and Medium Enterprises through Virtual Team

New product development (NPD) in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) virtual team has not been systematically investigated in developing countries. Literatures have shown no significant differences between traditional NPD and virtual NPD in general. New product development especially for SMEs virtual team are somewhat lacking in the literature and constitute a research gap. This paper aims to bridge this gap. This study first reviews the NPD and its relationship with virtuality and then identifies the critical factors in definition of NPD in SMEs virtual team. The statistical method was utilized to perform the required analysis of the data from survey. The results are achieved through factor analysis at the perspective of NPD in some of Malaysian and Iranian manufacturing firms. The 20 new product development factors were grouped into five higher level constructs. It gives valuable insight and guidelines which hopefully will help managers of firms in developing countries to consider the main factors in NPD.Survey Finding, New Product Development, Factor Analysis, Virtual Team

The Effectiveness of Virtual R&D Teams in SMEs: Experiences of Malaysian SMEs

The number of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), especially those involved with research and development (R&D) programs and employed virtual teams to create the greatest competitive advantage from limited labor are increasing. Global and localized virtual R&D teams are believed to have high potential for the growth of SMEs. Due to the fast-growing complexity of new products coupled with new emerging opportunities of virtual teams, a collaborative approach is believed to be the future trend. This research explores the effectiveness of virtuality in SMEs’ virtual R&D teams. Online questionnaires were emailed to Malaysian manufacturing SMEs and 74 usable questionnaires were received, representing a 20.8 percent return rate. In order to avoid biases which may result from pre-suggested answers, a series of open-ended questions were retrieved from the experts. This study was focused on analyzing an open-ended question, whereby four main themes were extracted from the experts’ recommendations regarding the effectiveness of virtual teams for the growth and performance of SMEs. The findings of this study would be useful to product design managers of SMEs in order to realize the key advantages and significance of virtual R&D teams during the new product development (NPD) process. This in turn, leads to increased effectiveness in new product development's procedure

Virtual R&D Teams: A potential growth of education-industry collaboration

Introduction: With the advent of the global economy and high-speed Internet, online collaboration is fast becoming the norm in education and industry 1. Information technology (IT) creates many new inter-relationships among businesses, expands the scope of industries in which a company must compete to achieve the competitive advantage. Information systems and technology allow companies to coordinate their activities in distant geographic locations 2. IT is providing the infrastructure necessary to support the development of new collaboration forms among industry and education. Virtual research and development (R&D) teams represent one such relational form, one that could revolutionize the workplace and provide organizations with unprecedented levels of flexibility and responsiveness 3-4

Critical factors for new product developments in SMEs virtual team

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are considered as an engine for economic growth all over the world and especially for developing countries. During the past decade, new product development (NPD) has increasingly been recognized as a critical factor in ensuring the continued survival of SMEs. On the other hand, the rapid rate of market and technological changes has accelerated in the past decade, so this turbulent environment requires new methods and techniques to bring successful new products to the marketplace. Virtual team can be a solution to answer the requested demand. However, literature have shown no significant differences between traditional NPD and virtual NPD in general, whereas NPD in SME’s virtual team has not been systematically investigated in developing countries. This paper aims to bridge this gap by first reviewing the NPD and its relationship with virtuality and then identifies the critical factors of NPD in virtual teams. The statistical method was utilized to perform the required analysis of data from the survey. The results were achieved through factor analysis at the perspective of NPD in some Malaysian and Iranian manufacturing firms (N = 191). The 20 new product development factors were grouped into five higher level constructs. It gives valuable insight and guidelines, which hopefully will help managers of firms in developing countries to consider the main factors in NPD.Survey findings, new product development, factor analysis, virtual team

Target group segmentation in the virtual space as a tool for defining the concept of a territory brand

Purpose: The article is aimed at investigating the possibility of competitiveness increase and investment attractiveness of the territory by means of virtual space segmentation where territorial entities interact. Design/Methodology/Approach: At present, interaction of most economic agents is conducted by means of internet technologies and web platforms. In the framework of territory development special emphasis is given to a territory brand to attract investments. Sustainable territory development in the competitive environment directly depends on the unleashing of territory potential, which in its turn is closely related to the problem of attracting resources and investments. In the context of the developed information society competitiveness of territorial entities is largely determined by the level and activeness of their representation in the internet space. Since the quality of the territory is determined by a number of advantages over other territories claiming to the same investments, one of the key mechanisms of forming such advantages is an effective presence of a territorial entity in the internet space. Findings: A three-tier synthetic model of the target group segmentation in the territory virtual space defining the brand concept is elaborated and justified. Practical implications: In practice, a proposed toolkit allows organizing internet representation of the territory, which lets take the territory represented to a new level of competitiveness. Originality/value: An original tool mechanism of forming the concept of territory brand by means of the target segmentation of the virtual space is proposed.peer-reviewe