New Product Development

The practice of product development is focused on the development of new engineered, manufactured products. Here, reducing both the product development interval and production cost while increasing product functionality and sustainability is a critical concern of managers. This concern is not unfounded. The rate of introduction and success of new products rely on the way in which managers structure, run, evaluate and improve their product development practice. Lateness to market can lead to major loss of market share and of income, while pre-production problems, unresolved due to time pressure, can lead to high costs, product recalls and liability claims. What is to be managed includes the product development process, the organizational interfaces (both within and outside the firm), the incorporation of functional perspectives such as industrial design and design for manufacture and the evaluation of the performance. In looking to improve [Page 553]practice and performance, managers investigate the practice of product development and examine how to (re)gain competitive advantage through improvements arising from

• learning from success and failure and
• developing and maintaining a fit between the firm strategy and product development task environment and a fit within the task environment between the development task, individuals and the formal and informal management systems.