This paper is a review of research in product development, which we define as the transformation of a market opportunity into a product available for sale. Our review is broad, encompassing work in the academic fields of marketing, operations management, and engineering design. The value of this breadth is in conveying the shape of the entire research landscape. We focus on product development projects within a single firm. We also devote our attention to the development of physical goods, although much of the work we describe applies to products of all kinds. We look inside the “black box ” of product development at the fundamental decisions that are made by intention or default. In doing so, we adopt the perspective of product development as a deliberate business process involving hundreds of decisions, many of which can be usefully supported by knowledge and tools. We contrast this approach to prior reviews of the literature, which tend to examine the importance of environmental and contextual variables, such as market growth rate, the competitive environment, or the level of top-management support.

By identifying the possibility that technologies with inferior performance can displace established incumbents, the notion of disruptive technologies, pioneered by Christensen (1997), has had a profound effect on the way in which scholars and managers approach technology competition. While the phenomenon of disruptive technologies has been well documented, the underlying theoretical drivers of technology disruption are less well understood. This article identifies the demand conditions that enable disruptive dynamics. By examining how consumers evaluate technology and how this evaluation changes as performance improves, it offers new theoretical insight into the impact of the structure of the demand environment on competitive dynamics. Two new constructs—preference overlap and preference symmetry—are introduced to characterize the relationships among the preferences of different market segments. The article presents a formal model that examines how these relationships lead to the emergence of different competitive regimes. The model is analyzed using computer simulation. The theory and model results hold implications for understanding the dynamics of disruptive technologies and suggest new indicators for assessing disruptive threats. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. From S-curves (Foster, 1986), to technology

Speed-to-Market is cited as being vital in today’s competitive, uncertain and turbulent environments. Scholars and industry professionals alike assert that companies can achieve competitive advantages by launching their product faster than their competitors. However, this paper presents a slightly different perspective on speed-to-market by considering another aspect of the speed equation-speed-to-learn or fast learning in new product development (NPD) teams. We assert that although speed-to-market can increase the probability of new product success, speed-to-learn is one of the critical factors that allows teams to get to market rapidly and be more successful. In this study, we propose a model for fast team learning in new product development based on constructs borrowed from accelerated learning models or suggestopedy in the individual learning scholarship. We then empirically test the model on 171 new product teams. We argue that 1) fastlearning teams launch new products quicker with an increased probability of success. And 2) specific mechanisms that are within the teams ’ control can help teams learn faster. Mechanisms uncovered include: vision clarity, learning from customer and competitor, and information coding.

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In today’s environment of rapid technological change companies can not rely on incremental innovations alone. To sustain long-term competitiveness companies need to develop radical innovations as well. Such innovations typically incorporate new and highly complex technologies, create new markets or shift existing market structures, and require user learning as they often induce significant behaviour changes on side of the users. To systematically develop radical innovations firms need to involve the proper actors. One such important external actor in the development process of new products is the user. Our study focuses on the question what kind of users are able to actively contribute to the development of radical innovations and what firms can learn from them to improve their innovative capability. A multiple case study analysis was conducted in the field of medical technology. Five radical innovation projects were selected including medical robots and computer-assisted navigation systems. The case study analysis reveals that users with a unique set of characteristics can contribute substantially to the development of radical innovations. These users have a high motivation toward new solutions, are open to new technologies, possess diverse competencies, and are embedded into a very supportive context. Manufacturers that took over the ideas and prototypes of the inventive users benefited significantly. By learning from these users, firms were able to significantly improve their radical innovative capability. The paper contributes to technology and innovation management research in two ways. First, by exploring critical user characteristics for distinct phases of the radical innovation process, we provide first insights how manufacturing firms can more effectively identify and leverage valuable users for their radical innovation work. Thereby, we highlight the involvement of capable users as an effective learning mechanism to improve the radical innovation capability of a firm. Second, new perspectives on lead user research are provided by enriching the lead user concept with other crucial characteristics of innovative users. 2 1

Users as inventors and developers of radical innovation: An explorative case study analysis in the field of medical technology

Scotland, where he lectured for five years. His is currently a Professor of Marketing at the

management in organizations: examining the interaction between technologies, techniques, and people

Marketing and Head of School, Marketing and Management, and introduction of Professorial Lecture. (Professor Glyn Davis, Vice Chancellor) 5.35 pm Lecture:

The concept of dynamic capabilities is both extremely popular and poorly understood, because researchers approach it from the “outside in. ” This perspective obscures the social processes through which people enact the capability, and black boxes the dynamics through which they combine exploitation with exploration. We explore the dynamic capability for sustained product innovation from the “inside out. ” We find that innovative organizations structure everyday work around a conceptual, physical, and temporal space based on the overlap of manufacturing, marketing, and R&D knowledge systems. This structuring of everyday work is the capability, and it becomes dynamic because three sets of rules and resources animate it: 1) taking responsibility for the entire process, which provides people with the resource of time; 2) valuing knowledge and expertise, which provides the authority to act; and 3) searching for opportunities, which provides options to address the inevitable surprises of innovation work. These rules and resources invoke routines that enable people to map out innovation work in time, generalize specialized knowledge to make it accessible to others, and keep open a variety of options to solve design problems. We illustrate this new theory and discuss its implications for how managers can actually use their dynamic capabilities.