The impact of initial planning activities on project success: Some evidence from a study of Japanese companies

The domain of New Product Development (NPD) is subject to considerable uncertainties. However, companies are required to manage the innovation process as efficiently as possible. The resulting conflicting demands often leave companies struggling to achieve both, efficiency as well as flexibility due to their often opposing implications for organizing and managing NPD projects. In this context, planning plays a central role. This study tries to develop a deeper understanding of the influences of project planning, the degree of technological newness and both their effects on project success. Our analysis is based on project planning of in combination with New Product Development projects in 497 electrical and mechanical engineering companies. --

Emerging interstices in communities of innovation

Somers, C., Stockstrom, C., & Henseler, J. (2021). Emerging interstices in communities of innovation. Creativity and Innovation Management, 30(2), 233-247. https://doi.org/10.1111/caim.12430Online communities are an important source of distributed intelligence and novelty for any firm. Their evolving independence exhibits purpose and progress of the individuals in them. However, research on community innovation is disparate, with literature enshrouded in macroperspectives of a firm's largest external source of innovation. Utilizing critical interpretive synthesis, we uncover three dominant perspectives in literature on community innovation—namely, outside-in, epistemic and competitive. We then propose a multilevel perspective of communities to explore three levels of innovation context. In closing, we examine a missing mesoperspective in literature and present four dynamic stages of exchange in communities—(i) convergence and design, (ii) interaction, (iii) interchange and (iv) productive synergy. With this final and main contribution, we apply a conceptual multilevel perspective to the same sample of 132 articles, previously used to demonstrate the three dominant macroperspectives. In doing so, we reconceptualize diversified knowledge in community literature and acknowledge the innovation context of independent individuals and groups in the community. We hope that scholars of open innovation use variations of the multilevel perspective for further theory construction as a lens into the context of innovation for individual, group and community innovation outcomes. The interconnectivity brought by these levels also creates challenges and opportunities for practitioners, wishing to engage with or design online communities to influence individual, group and community outcomes and motivations.publishersversionpublishe

Absorbing customer knowledge: how customer involvement enables service design success

Customers are a knowledge resource outside of the firm that can be utilized for new service success by involving them in the design process. However, existing research on the impact of customer involvement (CI) is inconclusive. Knowledge about customers’ needs and on how best to serve these needs (articulated in the service concept) is best obtained from customers themselves. However, codesign runs the risk of losing control of the service concept. This research argues that of the processes of external knowledge, acquisition (via CI), customer knowledge assimilation, and concept transformation form a capability that enables the firm to exploit customer knowledge in the form of a successful new service. Data from a survey of 126 new service projects show that the impact of CI on new service success is fully mediated by customer knowledge assimilation (the deep understanding of customers’ latent needs) and concept transformation (the modification of the service concept due to customer insights). However, its impact is more nuanced. CI exhibits an “∩”-shaped relationship with transformation, indicating there is a limit to the beneficial effect of CI. Its relationship with assimilation is “U” shaped, suggesting a problem with cognitive inertia where initial learnings are ignored. Customer knowledge assimilation directly impacts success, while concept transformation only helps success in the presence of resource slack. An evolving new service design is only beneficial if the firm has the flexibility to adapt to change

NPD-Process and Planning in Japanese engineering companies – Findings from an interview research

In this paper we report on the results of an interview research about new product development (NPD) processes and planning in 15 Japanese mechanical and electrical engineering companies. We asked the companies to describe one successful and one less successful project. All in all, we collected data for 29 projects, 15 of which were successful. We explore how these companies structure their NPD processes and conduct their planning activities in order to strike a balance between the needs for efficiency and flexibility, which often carry opposing implications for organizing and managing new product development projects. While the majority of the companies in our sample build their NPD efforts on a similar process model, we find them to employ diverse procedures to achieve their aims. In the companies we interviewed, there is a strong inclination towards planning R&D activities. New product development projects are based on well-defined procedures and written documents, which represent a standard approach to the companies’ R&D efforts. However, not all aspects are planned in equal depth and later phases of NPD projects, such as the implementation of the product concept into production, which exhibit lower uncertainty, are planned in much more detail. The need for flexibility in planning is highlighted by our finding that the less successful projects failed to anticipate changes – especially within the environment – and therefore were often carried out according to outdated plans and information. Our results suggest that the quality of the initial project plan with regard to the information it is based upon is closely linked to success. Despite the environmental turbulence, there seem to be no pronounced differences between successful and less successful projects concerning changes of the plan throughout the course of the project. Consequently, our interview partners consider the project managers of the unsuccessful projects to be less skilled in marketing and management than their successful counterparts

Innovationshemmnisse in KMU der Metropolregion Hamburg - Ergebnisse einer empirischen Untersuchung in ausgewählten Branchen

Ziel der vorliegenden Untersuchung war es, Hemmnisse im Innovationsprozess von KMU aus ausgewählten Branchen in der Metropolregion Hamburg zu ermitteln. Die übergeordnete Zielsetzung war, dass praxisgerechte KMU-spezifische Lösungsmaßnahmen ausgearbeitet werden, die den wirtschaftlichen Rahmenbedingungen der Metropolregion besonders Rechnung tragen. Die Befragung zeigte, dass KMU der untersuchten Industriezweige (Elektrotechnik, Fahrzeug- /Maschinenbau, Informationstechnologie / Neue Medien, Logistik, Maritime Wirtschaft und Medizintechnik) in Hamburg innovativ tätig sind und im Allgemeinen die überragende Bedeutung von Innovationen für ihren unternehmerischen Erfolg erkennen. Die Studie stellte eine Reihe von Innovationshemmnissen fest, die im Rahmen der Innovationsaktivitäten von KMU in allen Innovationsphasen (Konzeption, Entwicklung und Vermarktung) auftreten. Auf der Makroebene stellten sich Finanzierungsprobleme, Mangel an qualifizierten Fachkräften mit Berufserfahrung und die bürokratischen Hürden als größte Probleme heraus. Große Defizite im unternehmensinternen Umfeld wurden in den Bereichen Management der frühen Innovationsphasen, Projektmanagement, Kooperationen und Technologietransfer sowie im Bereich der Internationalisierung (F&E, Produktion und Vermarktung) festgestellt. Die hierbei gewonnenen Erkenntnisse weisen trotz der vergleichsweise geringen statistischen Basis der empirischen Erhebung eine hohe Signifikanz auf, da die Studienergebnisse von Clustermanagern der BWA, Verbandsvertretern (u.a. IHK, BDI, VDMA und hamburg@work) als auch von anderen vergleichbaren Studien bestätigt werden. Um das vorhandene Innovationspotenzial auszuschöpfen und die Innovationsfähigkeit von KMU zu entfalten, ist es notwendig, dass eine „Multikanalstrategie“ gefahren wird, indem: i) makroökonomische Rahmenbedingungen für KMU verbessert werden; ii) zwecks Vermittlung von fachspezifischem Methodenwissen kostengünstige Weiterbildungsmöglichkeiten für Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter von KMU geschaffen werden; i) Initiativen (z.B. Medienberichte, Veranstaltungen, Auszeichnungen besonders erfolgreicher Internationalisierungsprojekte etc.) ergriffen werden, die mehr „Best-Practice“-Beispiele in die öffentliche Wahrnehmung bringen. Hierzu können Internetportale eingerichtet werden, die themenspezifische Informationen (z.B. über Auslandsmärkte, Kooperationspartner etc.) vermitteln

"FUZZY FRONT END" PRACTICES IN INNOVATING JAPANESE COMPANIES

In this paper, we report on the results of a large-scale study about typical front-end-related innovation practices in 553 Japanese mechanical and electrical engineering companies. We explore typical activities concerning the generation and assessment of new product ideas, the reduction of technological as well as market uncertainty and front end planning. Finally, we report on the differences between successful and unsuccessful companies. Our study confirms earlier findings about the frequent use of creativity techniques in Japan during the process of idea generation. We also find companies to be intensively involved in upper management and customers on NPD projects. While integrating upper management is of vital importance for assessing new product ideas, integrating customers and users is primarily used to developing product ideas and concepts. We further find evidence that successful companies integrate their customers more frequently in the process of developing and assessing new product ideas than non-successful companies. In addition, the former integrate customer requirements into their product definitions more often and also translate these requirements into technical specifications more frequently than non-successful companies. Finally, successful companies more often systematically plan a project prior to its start than unsuccessful ones.Japan, new product development, front end