A number of studies have found that the performance of NPD projects greatly depends on the support they get from top management. However, research into why some projects get more support than others has been limited. The present paper takes a political approach to NPD, in which top management...

Project management in academic studies tends to be regarded as an adequate solution to the problems raised by innovation. This paper sets out to question this tendency to equate projects and innovation which, in our view, can lead to the improper use of projects to manage innovation. We argue...

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to examine how firms deal with a situation of true uncertainty about their potential markets and technologies. Specifically, we ask how firms can create products when the corresponding market does not exist. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is...

Long-term success of firms depends on the efficiency of their management of R&D projects. However, there is a gap between standard economic and strategic indicators and the high uncertainty, complexity of commitments, and organizational issues that can be observed in the more innovative R&D...

New interaction tools such as internet allow companies to gain valuable input from research and development (R&D) engineers via virtual teams. Consequently, engineers also get more expertise in diminutive timeframes. Virtual R&D teams present the key impetus to the technology acquisition...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are indeed the engines of global economic growth. Their continued growth is a major subject for the economy and employment of any country. Towards that end, virtual research and development (R&D) could be a viable option to sustain and ease the...

This paper aims to present the reality of the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz (UESC) (Ilhéus / Brazil) and the Universidade de La Rochelle (ULR) (France) in relation to the activities of innovation management, intellectual property (IP) and technology transfer (TT) performed at each...

Projectification and platform approaches have been two main transformation trends implemented by industrial firms during the1990s. For those firms, innovation management no longer deals with introducing radically and totally new products, but rather withapplying innovative features within a...

In the literature on new product development, most existing studies on the end of the design process concentrate on managing ramp-up in the field of manufactured products. This situation poses a problem at a time when our economies increasingly depend upon services and products are more and more...

Since the seminal work of J. March (1991), balancing exploration and exploitation activities is an important topic in management research. Though the literature is abundant on the management of exploitation activities, exploration activities remain a much less studied area. How should be...