[Abstract]:Firms undertaking new product development are faced with an environment which ischaracterised by long lead times from basic research to industrial application, acommercialisation phase with short lead times and an increasingly accelerated rate ofobsolescence under the global competition of the new product development process.While this is true for all firms, STBFs face further complications from the inherentlyhigher risks associated with such firms. In examining how STBFs undertake their newproduct development (NPD), the relationship between corporate strategy, NPD processfeatures and new product success factors specifically need to be considered. Anadditional consideration is the role that business incubators play in assisting tenantSTBFs to undertake their new product development. As such, the theory of how newproduct development is undertaken by STBFs lies across several disciplines includingcorporate strategy theory, new product development theory, entrepreneurial theory,technology management theory, economic development theory and business incubatortheory. Specifically, the research problem for this research is: what are the origins andnature of new product development processes within STBFs and how do they contributeto STBF success?In undertaking a review of the literature some insights were obtained to specificallyexplain how STBFs undertake their new product development, the relationship betweenNPD process activity and new product and firm success and the role of businessincubators. As a result, a theoretical framework was developed which in turn, resulted inthree research questions:RQ 1: What elements of NPD are adopted by STBFs when developing new products?RQ 2: How does the lack of adoption of the elements of NPD contribute to new productand firm failure in STBFs?RQ 3: How and in what ways do business incubators influence the performance of theelements of NPD adopted by STBFs?A three-stage qualitative research design within the realism paradigm was used for thisresearch. It combined exploratory interviews with a case study methodology in order tobuild theory through induction. This was then followed up with a series of interviews todiscover which firms had experienced product failure, had discontinued their NPDprocess and/or had suffered firm failure over the duration of the study. As a result,meaningful insights were able to be obtained into the relationships between the adoptionof elements of NPD, new product failure and firm failure in the context of STBFs.The findings revealed that there were several aspects of the ways in which STBFsundertake their new product development activities which were not identified in theliterature. In this respect, it was evident that unlike larger and established firms in whichnew product development activity is derived out of corporate strategy, STBFs undertakecorporate strategy development as a component of new product development. It was alsofound that the corporate strategy – product development nexus was not linear but rathercomprised a number of close inter-relationships between elements of corporate strategy,NPD process features and new product success factors requiring parallel activity.Furthermore, the majority of STBFs adopted only 15 of the 22 best practice elements ofNPD proposed as part of the theoretical framework of new product development inSTBFs. In addition, it was found that the STBFs that suffered failure over the course ofthe study adopted comparatively fewer elements of NPD than did their continuing STBFcounterparts.Importantly, it was also found that business incubators provided only a modest positiveinfluence on the performance of NPD activities by their tenant STBFs. Moreover, asSTBFs are commonly single product centric, that is their overall new productdevelopment effort is focused on a single product or a narrow product line, therelationships between new product development effectiveness, new product success andfirm success are closely aligned. More specifically, ineffective support for NPD activitiescan lead to a potential lack of effectiveness of business incubators in reducing the risk of failure of their tenant STBFs. This is despite the more general focus of businessincubators in assisting tenant STBFs with corporate strategy development.The main contribution of this theory building research was the development of anempirically confirmed, theoretical and practical model for the development andmanagement of new product development by start-up technology based firms.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/220936 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Beven, Peter W. |
| Publisher | University of Southern Queensland, Faculty of Business |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.usq.edu.au/eprints/terms_conditions.htm, (c) Copyright 2007 Peter W. Beven |
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