In recent year, new product development(NPD) has had the greater influence on the overall business competitiveness. Several enviromental changes such as accelerating in the rate of technological development, shorter product life cycles, more intense competition due to maturing of markets and globalization and a fragmentation of the market place due to changing demographics has forced firms to increasingly rely on new products for sales and profitability.
By building its product development strategies and organization to match more closely the wants and needs of the marketplace, a firm can transform product development into a formidable competitive weapon. Just as formidable, however, is the effort that this transformation requires.
The purpose of this study is to analyze an impacts of competitive strategies and organization type on the effectiveness of NPD according to type of development projects such as derivatives or platform technology. More specifically, the key research question is "What is the competitive strategies and organization type that affect the technological and commercial performance of development projects carried out by a consumer electronics manufacturing company?" In order to answer the question, this study reviews relevant literature and formulates a research framework. Also, in-depth case analyses on the six successful development projects are carried out.
As a result, this study suggested that a firm should consider several factors relating to its capabilities and various project and market characteristics to increase the effectiveness of product development as follow;
1. Building differentiation strategy and heavyweight team increase the effectiveness of development projects in the platform technology and new market characteristics.
2. Building cost strategy and lightweight team increase the effectiveness of development projects in the derivatives technology and old market characteristics.
The focal point of this study is the building organization and competitive strategies taking place before a product development project is actually started. This stage is crucial to effective development performance. Improper handling of this stage might result in failure to focus individual projects sufficiently to guarantee their rapid and productive execution.
This thesis suggests two practical guidelines, first, competitive strategies and organization type should vary according to market and technological characteristics. Also, there are no shortcuts to effective development performance. The capabilities required to move quickly and efficiently to the market should be deeply built into an organization. Second, this study emphasizes the building of competitive strategies relating to market, which is key success factor to develop the new products on the maturing technology industry.
