With increasing demands from customers, companies face the challenges of shortening the new product development (NPD) period, reducing development cost and increasing development efficiency. High quality and efficiency of NPD can increase the chance for companies to be competitive on the market. Forming up cross-functional teams becomes a popular way of maximizing the knowledge then increase the development quality and efficiency. However, it is challenging to integrate the resources from different functions and even more challenging when the resources are from different countries. To overcome the integration challenges can increase the efficiency of NPD projects therefore finally win global market shares. This study’s purpose is to identify and analyze integration challenges experienced by a verification team involved in global NPD and to suggest how those challenges can be managed by answering two research questions: 1) What are the integration challenges with the current work process encountered by the global verification team? 2) How can the integration challenges be met in the improved work process? The case study is used as the research method in order to get deep insight of the challenges that a global verification team faces. VSM Group AB, an international leading sewing company is selected as the case company.  The case team, a global verification team locates both in Sweden and China, plays the role of verification work within NPD process. The case team verifies the design and new products in the process.  Through interviews, observation and literature reviews, the challenges in this global verification team are identified. It is found that the case team needs to overcome language barriers, culture difference, task planning and formalization and standardization on work performance during integration. Based on the investigations, a set of solutions are proposed in the end to meet the challenges. These solutions are an improved work process, work performance system, training program and uniformed documentation. These proposals are inspired by the integration mechanisms such as formalization and standardization, special reports etc and then fit them into the case team context. By simulation and evaluation the solutions within the global verification team, the feedback on the proposals helped for improvement. This case study at VSM is an empirical example of implementation of integration mechanisms into a real life context.

在持續創新的需求下，跨公司合作已成為企業整合應用知識，創新求變的重要策略。本文融合知識基礎觀點和組織學習觀點，指出跨公司合作所帶來的組織創新績效，係因合作夥伴知識整合的結果。因此研究的目的除了要實證知識整合與組織創新績效的關係外，主要在發展一個理論架構，說明影響跨公司合作創新的因素，及這些因素之間的關係。在研究設計上，本文係以我國高科技產業、資訊服務業及金融服務業做為問卷調查的對象，將所收集的資料透過探索性分析與驗證性分析兩階段檢定本文所提出之量測模式與研究假說，結果得到下列結論： 1. 跨公司合作為企業所帶來的創新績效，可以用知識整合的觀點來解釋，當企業知識整合能力越好，跨公司合作創新績效會越好。 2. 知識整合能力受到企業知識吸收能力的影響，吸收能力係企業先前知識的蓄積量，以及應用這些知識的能力之綜合。 3. 知識整合能力亦受到企業與夥伴合作的能力之影響，合作能力包括企業與夥伴建立信任關係，以及溝通、協調的能力。 4. 知識特質受知識整合機制的中介而影響創新績效，跨公司合作所帶來組織的創新績效，主要不受合作所牽涉知識之外顯╱內隱與複雜性特質的影響，必須應知識特質的不同而採取適當的整合機制後，才能因知識整合而產生創新績效。 5. 吸收能力、合作能力與知識整合機制是相互影響的因素，三者形成企業知識整合創新能力的主要構面，是企業追求跨公司合作創新必須重視的要素。 / Inter-firm collaboration has been an important strategy for firms to integrate and apply knowledge among their partners in order to obtain innovation performance under uncertainty circumstances. This study combining the knowledge based view and the organizational learning perspective, considers the innovation performance improvement as the result of knowledge integration. Besides examining the relation between innovation performance and knowledge integration, the purpose of this study is to find the factors influencing inter-firm collaboration performance and the relationships among these factors. The data collecting from Taiwan’s high-tech, information service and finance industry were used in the exploratory and confirmatory phases to evaluate the instruments and test the hypotheses. The conclusions are listed as below: 1. The innovation performance gaining from inter-firm collaboration can be considered as the result of knowledge integration. While the knowledge integration capability of a firm is better, the firm’s innovation performance in inter-firm collaborations will be better too. 2. The knowledge integration capability of a firm is influenced by the absorptive capacity of the firm. And the firm’s absorptive capacity derives from the firm’s prior knowledge accumulation and the capability to apply their knowledge. 3. The knowledge integration capability of a firm is also influenced by their cooperative competency. The cooperative competency is composed of three interrelated facets: trust, communication and coordination. 4. Firm’s innovation performance in an inter-firm collaboration doesn’t directly influenced by the explicit/tacit and complexity characteristics of the knowledge which appeared in the collaboration. To produce innovation performance, knowledge with different characteristics should be integrated by suitable integration mechanisms. 5. Absorptive capacity, corporative competency and knowledge integration mechanism construct firm’s “knowledge integration and innovation capability”, which is important to firm’s innovation performance in inter-firm collaborations.