<p>The topic of this research is to explore to what extent innovation and new product development (NPD) are managed with formal and informal control mechanisms respectively and in combination in five international food industry companies. The topic deals with finding an understanding of controlling innovation processes which require freedom to some extent but at the same time are to be managed in order to keep track of the resources. Cases’ selection was designed to bring variation and catch the complexity of the phenomenon by studying one prime case and validating the results with four minor case companies’ results. The findings of the study indicate that first of all formal and informal control mechanisms coexist and interact and secondly that a more informal and personalized take is beneficial in R&D settings.</p>

User involvement has, during recent years, become something of a mantra among product development managers. However, the existing literature has not much to say about how the individual user contributes to product innovation and whether her or his contribution is valuable.  The thesis attempts to fill this gap in knowledge by reporting experiments in which ordinary users are asked to suggest new services that their mobile telephones could deliver. The originality, user value, and the feasibility of their suggestions are then compared to the suggestions of professional product designers. On the whole, the users contribute ideas that are more original, and that could result in services of higher user value than the professionals.  Exactly how the users are involved matters for the outcome of their involvement. Two different approaches to involving users are identified, Guided Users and Pioneering Users. The Guided User approach seems to be preferable when stepwise refinement of an existing service is desired.  The Pioneering User approach is better suited to supporting radical innovation. The conclusion is that firms must adapt their processes of developing new products in order to realise the full potential of user involvement. / Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Handelshögsk., 2003

Given today’s industry dynamics, new service development is becoming increasingly important to the competitiveness, growth, and survival of organizations. Unfortunately, new service development has proven to be a complex and difficult task. Numerous reasons are stated in the literature such as the difficulty of understanding and anticipating latent customer needs and insufficient market research techniques. To facilitate proactive learning about the customer, recent findings stress customer involvement in the development process and observations of customers in real action. The overall objective of the dissertation is to contribute to an increased knowledge of customer involvement, i.e., the role of customers as contributors and co-creators in new service development. The thesis draws on theory from market and learning orientation in conjunction with a service-centered model, and provides an extensive review of literature on customer involvement in innovation. In five separate studies, this doctor’s thesis addresses the customer’s role in innovation activities in various industries (e.g., Staffing Services, Airline Services, and Mobile Telecommunication services). In this thesis it is argued that interaction is not only the focal point of services, but also the essence of customer involvement. A special emphasis is put on supporting techniques as these are the means by which customer information and knowledge are created. In addition, results are provided showing that customer involvement in innovation pays off. Companies that engage in collaborative innovation with customers can expect improved customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and profit margin.

The topic of this research is to explore to what extent innovation and new product development (NPD) are managed with formal and informal control mechanisms respectively and in combination in five international food industry companies. The topic deals with finding an understanding of controlling innovation processes which require freedom to some extent but at the same time are to be managed in order to keep track of the resources. Cases’ selection was designed to bring variation and catch the complexity of the phenomenon by studying one prime case and validating the results with four minor case companies’ results. The findings of the study indicate that first of all formal and informal control mechanisms coexist and interact and secondly that a more informal and personalized take is beneficial in R&amp;D settings.

The aim of this dissertation is to improve knowledge of how organizations adapt to their dynamic environments, by developing a detailed understanding of the configuration and evolution of organizational replicators. Among open questions in the literature on organizational adaptation, I have explored the following: How can the structure of organizational replicators and the nature of their components be realistically described? How do different organizational replicators interact with each other at different levels within and across organizational boundaries? How do replicators evolve? Why do firms need dynamic capabilities? I’ve addressed these questions by means of an embedded, longitudinal field study of Alessi, an Italian firm founded in 1921, active in the development and production of hundreds of design household products. Data analysis has been carried out in two steps. First, a longitudinal analysis of available primary and archival data has provided an in-depth understanding of the composite nature of organizational replicators, their mutual relationships, their evolution, their outcome stability. Second, a more structured investigation relying on Optimal Matching Analysis allowed to reliably develop an understanding of replicators complexity and of the mechanisms behind their evolution. There are four key findings. First, replicators are not simply behavioral entities—routines in the “narrow sense”. Reliable performance of a capability requires additional elements of physical, intellectual and social capital, which are essential components of replicators (or “Replication Base—RB”, as I suggest to label these more articulated organizational traits). Second, interactions among components of Replication Bases at different levels within and outside the organization suggest a more articulated perspective on how organizational knowledge develops. Components of Replication Bases are often located at different positions within the organization. Over time, knowledge of a particular organizational process takes different forms across the organizational hierarchy. What is local search at one level of analysis, gradually becomes sophisticated foresight at different, typically higher, levels. Third, over time Replication Bases evolve by means of a complex interplay between random mutations and intentional interventions, supported by articulated learning processes. Finally, development of higher-level replicators is not the ultimate answer to the challenge of adaptation. Rather, it allows managers to focus their intentional interventions to the higher-level problems posed by the dynamism of competitive environments. Part of this liberated managerial attention and resources are focused on the crucial, non-routine task of understanding how the organization’s idiosyncratic attributes affect its prospects in the specific competitive context. Taken together, these findings outline the microfoundations of a framework for interpreting organizational adaptation.

In recent years, due to severe global market competition, increase of manpower costs and decrease in foreign trade, plus low-price labor costs from China and southeastern Asia countries (eg. Vietnam), all these factors enforce Taiwan manufacturing, such as motorcycle industry, moving their production factories to those countries. This phenomenon has been brought to Taiwan government¡¦s attention, and this crisis has encouraged our industrial circles to develop higher-level R&D and design center. Furthermore, the official department (eg. Industrial Development Bureau) also supplies enterprises with expenses support to conduct R&D and design. Within New Product Development (NPD) is one of the major subsidiary entries. Take Taiwan motorcycle industry as an example. To develop NPD is an essential competitive strategy for enterprise. On the one hand, this strategy has helped Taiwan motorcycle industry to be independent of technical domination from Japan; on the other hand, it has created differentiation in motorcycle industry and consolidated the foundation marching into international market. This is also what internal manufacture enterprises strive for. NPD process involves several stages. For example, in 1994 Cooper brought up product composition, initial evaluation, concept design, product development, product test, engineering trial production and limited quantity to market, these 7 stages, and NPD participant units or departments are quite a lot. For example, in motorcycle development process, participant units include merchandise plan, sales, R&D, manufacture, mold design, and quality control departments, and even parts supplier or motorcycle agent. This kind of collaborative development method has the advantages of putting heads together so as to get better results and cooperation. However, it remains existing problems with wasting time and efforts on inter-department interaction and manual data communication, and data accuracy (eg. version of design chart). To cope with the above problems, most enterprises are solving via existing IT system, such as simplex e-mail, more complex ERP (enterprise resources planning, ERP) or PDM (product data management, PDM). These systems have their own functions. E-mail focuses on communication; ERP integrates information of manufacture, human resources, finance, and marketing; PDM puts emphasis on engineering data management. In the viewpoint of NPD, these systems can only provides partial functions, but are incapable of support the requirements of entire collaborative process. For example, e-mail cannot supplies simultaneous communication; ERP lacks of design mold required by R&D department; PDM only has engineering data. If other departments need related data, they must develop other software to obtain. Because of swift progress in IT plus the cooperation demands in business operation among enterprises, departments and individuals, all these arouse attention on collaborative commerce, and it can also recover the disadvantages of e-mail, ERP or PDM while operating in NPD process. Collaborative commerce contains collaborative scheme, collaborative marketing, collaborative product commerce (or development) and collaborative service, these system classifications. Within them, collaborative product development binds NPD most. In current, the main manufacturers are PTC, HP and IBM. The merits of the system lie in effective controlling NPD process, constructing NPD operation standard, and accumulating experiences in new product design and manufacture. For example, in1995 Airbus in France had used PTC Windchill to conduct collaborative aircraft design. In 1999, there was Taiwan manufacturer under government¡¦s subsidy applying this system on new motorcycle model design. The main objective to introduce collaborative product development software is applying IT to support NPD process. IT introduction process is an important period for enterprises to identify whether it is successful or not, and the adaptation during the process is the key accordance to determine success or failure of IT. Therefore, some scholars discuss IT introduction process from adaptation point of view. For example, Leonard ¡V Barton¡]LB¡^¡]1988¡^addresses mutual adaptation mode between technology and organization to resolve misalignment during introduction process in technology (original IT specification), delivery system (training courses), performance criteria (impact upon activity). Susman et al.¡]2003¡^addresses that while using collaborative technology, the misalignments between technology and work, team and organization should be solved. DeSantics and Poole¡]1994¡^ bring up adaptive structuration theory¡]AST¡^. The theory emphasizes on appropiration in technology, work, organizational environment and group. The higher the appropiration is, the higher the decision performance will be. Tyre and Orlikowski¡]1994¡^deem the technology adaptation is not gradual and continuous, but highly discontiunous. They indicate that in adaptation discrepancy events will discontinuously occur. This event provides enterprise an opportunity to review the suitability of existing process or a method to modify present process. Although above researches have provided vital results, research result from Majchrzak et al.¡]2000¡^about new technology introduction process still cannot clearly describe all phenomena. Hence, they have discussed adaptation in project process via rocket design project and used collaborative technology (such as e-mail, data sharing or electric board) Majchrzak et al. has connected collaborative technology and NPD, but the research has discussed small and simple collaborative technology only (such as e-mail), but lacked of result of large and complex collaborative product development software. Meanwhile, although the result is the application of NPD, it does not provide the adaptation of each NPD stage (such as engineering trial manufacture). Furthermore, the mature experiences from western countries, such as Airbus in France, in introduction of collaborative product development software in NPD is worthy of consultation, but the specific situations in different countries should be taken into consideration. In Taiwan, cases which application of collaborative product development software supports NPD are still rare, but these introduction experiences are worthy of making thorough inquiry for other enterprises¡¦ reference. Therefore, the article has selected a case closed study of Taiwan manufacturing that introduced collaborative product development software and accompanied with related adaptation theory (such as LB mode, AST, discrepancy event, etc.) to thoroughly investigate adaptation conditions and result analysis before, in the middle of, and after introduction.

The thesis aims to observe the industrial design profession and to study the role of industrial designer in Turkish industry. Through an electronic questionnaire investigating the manufacturers&rsquo / and designers&rsquo / opinions about how industrial design practice is perceived and how industrial designers are utilized in Turkey it was possible to examine the current roles of industrial designers and to evaluate the status of industrial design profession. The survey also investigated how the industrial designer or the design team is situated in new product development process, and in the corporate hierarchy, what kind of investments have been made in the last decades by manufacturers in Turkey on industrial design.

This work outlines an Innovation Gap in technology commercialization and presents a novel tool, the Advanced Technology Innovation Mapping (ATIM) tool to address this gap. The tool aims to support technology commercialization in early stages of & prior to the New Product Development Process. The dissertation includes a detailed rationale, description, history, similar and originating methods for this tool based on Value Engineering and Function Maps for Design. This work also demonstrates on several example studies the use of the tool and evaluates via an exploratory study the usefulness of the tool. Research tests the tool in educational and training programs at the University of Texas at Austin and finds that the tool improves user understating of majority of important factors for technology commercialization (customer, technology, development activities). User feedback supports these conclusions. In the future the tool could be further expanded, more standardized and improved. Additionally, the work proposes further ways to study the tool in different settings and with groups of different sizes beyond this early exploratory study. / text

For many firms, particularly those operating in high technology and competitive markets, knowledge is cited as the most important strategic asset to the firm, which significantly drives its survival and success. Knowledge management (KM) impacts the firm's ability to develop process features that reduce manufacturing costs, product designs with the features and functionality to match consumer demand, and time to market. Unfortunately, many firms lack an understanding of how to develop and exploit knowledge capabilities for success. In this thesis I develop a rich and multifaceted understanding of how KM strategies lead to successful outcomes for a firm. The thesis comprises three essays, described below. The first essay (Chapter 2) examines how volume-based learning influences the relationship between a buyer and supplier in a two-period Stackelberg game. Three types of knowledge management practices are considered. First, in contrast to the literature, I recognize that knowledge accumulated from current in-house production contributes to the buyer's future product and process development efforts. Second, I allow the supplier to invest in integration process improvement (a form of knowledge development) to reduce the buyer's integration cost. Therefore, the supplier has two mechanisms to impact the buyer's demand: price and process improvement. Lastly, both the buyer and supplier benefit from volume-based learning that reduces their respective production costs. I provide conditions under which the buyer partially outsources component demand as opposed to fully outsourcing or fully producing in-house. In addition, I identify conditions for which the supplier's price and investment in integration process improvement can serve either as substitutes or complements. In the second essay (Chapter 3), I consider knowledge development (KD) strategies in a new product development (NPD) project with three stages of activities conducted concurrently: prototyping, pilot line testing, and production ramp-up. I capture the link between successive stages of engineering activities by recognizing that knowledge accumulated in one stage and transferred to another stage improves the efficiency of knowledge development in the recipient stage. A Base Model and two extensions are introduced that differ in the manner in which knowledge transfer (KT) occurs. I find that the NPD manager pursues different dynamic strategies for KD in each stage of the project. In addition, I explore how the effectiveness of KD and the returns to KT impact the optimal strategies adopted in each stage. In the third essay (Chapter 4), I introduce a dynamic model to explore the impact of KT on a manager?s pursuit of an existing product improvement project and a new product development project. These two projects consume costly knowledge development resources. A key feature of the model is the characterization of the knowledge transfer process from the new product development project to the existing product improvement project. As a result of KT, the ability of the existing product improvement project to generate new knowledge is enhanced. However, the ability of the new product to generate expected net revenue when it is released to the marketplace is reduced due to the loss of proprietary knowledge. I obtain dynamic optimal strategies of KD in both projects and the optimal strategy of KT from the new product development project to the existing product improvement project.

This thesis examines the process of new product development for small firms, aiming to specify what separate top performers from the rest. Every year, thousands of new products are introduced to the market. Yet, 75 % to 90 % of all products launched suffer from failure. Prevailing theory is founded on examinations on large firms, which differ significantly from small firms in terms of financial and human capital. This gives reason to suspect that prevailing theory fail to serve the specific needs of a small firm. In this study, previous research is summarized in a theoretical framework. A set of survey questions was sent out to 2,287 managers in Swedish small manufacturing firms. A research model was developed to help analyze and interpret the 156 complete responses. 32 significant variables separating top performers from the rest were acknowledged and three factor areas were specified in a framework for small firm new product success. The findings of our study indicate that prevailing theory fail to serve small firms. We conclude that small firms benefit from focusing to simplify rather than adding to refine, and that this is strongly correlated to the limited financial and human resources of a small firm.