Selecting program portfolios within a budget constraint is an important challenge in the management of new product development (NPD). Optimal portfolios are difficult to define because of the combinatorial complexity of project combinations. However, at the aggregate level of the strategic...

In various industries end-product manufacturers acquire core subsystems from upstream technology provider firms and focus primarily on efficient end-product integration. We examine the strategic interactions between a technology firm that introduces a new subsystem and the respective end-product...

The first step in transforming strategy from a hopeful statement about the future into an operational reality is to allocate resources to innovation and new product development (NPD) programs in a portfolio. Resource allocation and NPD portfolio decisions often span multiple levels of the...

Motivated by several examples from industry, such as the introduction of a biotechnology-based process innovation in nylon manufacturing, we consider a technology provider that develops and introduces innovations to a market of industrial customers--original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The...

Past research in new product development (NPD) has conceptualized prototyping as a "design-build-test-analyze" cycle to emphasize the importance of the analysis of test results in guiding the decisions made during the experimentation process. New product designs often involve complex...

Developing the "right" new products is critical to firm success and is often cited as a key competitive dimension. This paper explores new product development (NPD) portfolio strategy and the balance between incremental and radical innovation. We characterize innovative effort through a...

Since Osborn's Applied Imagination book in 1953 (Osborn, A. F. 1953. Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Thinking. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York), the effectiveness of brainstorming has been widely debated. While some researchers and practitioners consider it the...

The last decade has seen a growing consensus that manufacturing matters. The factory as the producing unit is the core of the firm's manufacturing activities. However, even now, it is not agreed on or even fully understood what constitutes a well-managed factory. This article attempts to create...

A long-standing debate on incentive and reward schemes has taught us that employees are not motivated by money and resources alone. A fundamental emotional motivator is the seeking for status and recognition. Traditional conceptualizations of status-seeking behavior viewed it as a rational means...