Complexities and costs of negotiating with universities on contract issues (deliverables, timetables, and intellectual property rights)for small and medium sized enterprises are too large to make a relationship worth while.
Authors discussions with small and medium sized enterprises revealed their belief that the costs involved in locating and contracting with university researchers were too high.
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Factors that may negatively influence the likelihood that an academic/researcher will engage in the provision of consulting services include, reliance on university internal funding (as opposed to private funding), and when they are active in computer sciences (rather than in life sciences) — based upon an examination of six fields, physics, mathematics and statistics, chemistry, computer science, earth sciences, and life sciences.
How academics manage their portfolio of knowledge transfer activities.
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Firms which attempt to use information in ways that do not match their strategic orientation, create internal barriers to effective information sharing, integration and synthesis by their internal project teams.
Survey of 150 software development teams.
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Outsourcing expertise in NPD is difficult to implement in two ways. First, the danger of hollowing out the internal knowledge base so that the organization loses the core competence in key areas. Second, the firm loses the ability to integrate expertise from within the firm and across the supply chain. The firm may realize short-term cost savings but risks losing core competence to external sources.
Corporate case study.
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An organization can designate Boundary Spanners — staff who establish effective communication protocols between the internal and external sources of expertise. The Boundary Spanners keep the internal units involved in the same activities as the external suppliers, by way of dry runs, shadow engineering, or patenting in the supplier's domain. Organizations gain the speed and cost efficiency of outsourcing, while maintaining and updating core competencies.
Corporate case study.
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Factors that may positively influence the likelihood that an academic/researcher will create a spin-off company include: increased novelty of the research (significant changes in materials or production techniques), increased network assets, greater research unit size, greater experience, affiliation to the engineering field (rather than to the life sciences field), affiliation to the computer sciences field (rather than to the life sciences field), affiliation to large research universities (rather than small and medium ones), and being a man (rather than a woman) — based upon an examination of six fields, physics, mathematics and statistics, chemistry, computer science, earth sciences, and life sciences.
How academics manage their portfolio of knowledge transfer activities.
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Factors that may positively influence the likelihood that an academic/researcher will engage in the provision of consulting services include, reliance on private funding (as opposed to internal university funding), increases in their network assets, increases in the size of their research unit, affiliation with large research universities (rather than small and medium ones), and when they are in engineering (rather than in life sciences) — based upon an examination of six fields, physics, mathematics and statistics, chemistry, computer science, earth sciences, and life sciences.
How academics manage their portfolio of knowledge transfer activities.
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Gatekeepers - Bring information into the organization and disperse it among fellow cross-functional team members, as well as serve as point of communication contact with external partners and key customers.
Review of Literature — 1969 — 1994.
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Information Technology can be designed to facilitate communication and interaction among cross-functional team members, both for internal and external communications. The IT provides conveniences for team member discussions and information exchanges at any time or place.
Survey of manufacturers in Taiwan (n = 102).
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Organizational Structure facilitates communication. The characteristics of the organizational structure are shown to facilitate cross-functional team work if they are less centralized and less formal. This structure provides a great deal of freedom for team members to do their work, and facilitate free-flowing communication and coordination among the members.
Survey of manufacturers in Taiwan (n = 102).
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Obtain early commitment from suppliers, establish clear definitions and expectations, understand suppliers’ alternatives
Survey.
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Sharing of technology and cost-related information between suppliers and buyers can improve internal team dynamics as well as exchanges between organizations. One strategy is sharing the organization's technology road map, which details the products and performance criteria anticipated to be developed by the organization over the following years, decade or century. Sharing such information with a supplier may lead to advantages such as reducing technology uncertainty and influencing industry standard designs.
Survey of 84 companies.
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Six general themes for NPD best practice are described: (1) Instill a strategic, long-term orientation toward NPD. (2) Have a formal portfolio management process. (3) Implement a formal NPD process supported by a discipline to adhere to this process. (4) Conduct market research proactively. (5) Use cross-functional teams. (6) Utilize standardized criteria and metrics.
Generated from published studies on benchmarking data.
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Supplier involvement on a new product development team can lead to improved project outcomes and reduced technology uncertainty. Involvement may be more beneficial early on during R&D for new products and those that are highly specialized. Later stage involvement may be more appropriate for incremental products and products with short life cycles.
Survey of 84 companies.
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When seeking partners consider — in order — technological alignment (technical ability, technical resource and market knowledge complementarity, and overlapping knowledge bases); strategic alignment (motivation correspondence and goal correspondence); and relational alignment (compatible cultures, propensity to change, and long-term orientation).
Narrative analysis of case studies and literature review.
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A collaborative work environment is positively associated with NPD project efficiency. Collocation of project members reduces the physical distances between them. The removal of distance as a barrier should improve overall project efficiency, as information transactions and other communications are made easier.
Survey of 137 completed NPD projects. Managers’ perceptions of a collaborative environment were significantly higher on average for efficient projects as opposed to Inefficient projects, supporting one hypothesis.
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Establish contracts with suppliers early in the process to ensure a source of raw materials, and to engage their expertise within the overall planning process.
Conclusions drawn from case studies and experience.
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Firms that encourage the free circulation of information and knowledge among those responsible for a new product, and that prevent specialist tunnel-vision in problem solving, appear to come up with better products faster, and use fewer man-hours in doing so.
Findings from literature review by authors.
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In the federal system, networking should be extended to contractors. They should be invited to participate early. Contractor recommendations on research plans and schedules could reduce implementation risks. To ensure fair competition, all interested contractors should be asked to participate.
Lessons from empirical study.
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Involvement of customers with strong past ties will result in the development of products with higher competitive performance than those that involve customers with no or few past ties. However, this practice is most effective when developing incremental products, rather than highly innovative products.
Survey of 137 new product development projects.
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Matching new product development tasks to employee interests and strengths helps to ensure that those tasks will be appropriately handled. Employees who possess traits associated with inventors thrive in R&D environments; those who act as champions do well during the opportunity recognition phase; those who are project implementers are best placed in project execution roles; while serial innovators do well throughout the entire process.
Survey data.
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Participate in a Research Center within a University to help find new ideas, gain access to scientists and to recruit new graduate students.
The longitudinal evaluation of the National Science Foundation's Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers Programs found both Universities and Industries to be satisfied with the Centers and felt their expectations were being met.
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Researchers are usually required to obtain advance approval from independent ethics boards prior to engaging in research that involves human subjects. Knowledge users (stakeholder groups) are often unfamiliar with requirements associated with informed consent, anonymity, confidentiality, data access and data management. Ensure these requirements and their implications for participation, process and practice are understood at the beginning of the project.
Lessons learned from close researcher-stakeholder partnerships.
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Researchers can benefit from establishing ongoing partnerships with key knowledge users (stakeholder groups). To avoid interruptions that could result from the departure of specific stakeholder group members, researchers should establish group- or institutional-level linkages.
Lessons learned from close researcher-stakeholder partnerships.
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The appropriate image for the NPD process is self-similarity. For example, exemplary leadership, sensitive communications, and integrative managerial structure are necessary for effective NPD-regardless of the level of the organization.
Conclusions drawn from empirical study.
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The contribution of the supplier in new product development (NPD) can, in fact, enable the buyer to: 1. Take advantage of the technological competence of the supplier. 2. Shorten the time to market. 3. Improve the quality and lower the global cost. 4. Increase the level of motivation of suppliers, because the suppliers become responsible for the whole product design and not just 'pieces' of it.
Experiential. Authors' knowledge.
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To improve short-term competitive performance of products in the marketplace, projects to develop incremental new products should involve homogeneous groups of customers.
Survey of 137 product development projects.
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Differences in organizational cultures, mindsets, expectations, and behavior. Knowledge spillover may result when dealing with proprietary information in collaborations.
Source: Hanson & Lackman, 1998; Tse, Francis & Walls, 1994; Yan, Luo, & Child, 2000. In: Emden, Z., Calantone, R.J. & Droge, C. (2006)

The existence of an overarching relationship (historical or longstanding) between a researcher and relevant decision makers (knowledge users), where research utilization is only one activity in the larger, ongoing relationship, can be important for the utilization of research findings.
Source: Goering (2003); Mohrman (2001); Canadian Health Services Research Foundation (2002); Golden-Biddle (2003). In: Ginsburg, L.R., Lewis, S., Zackheim, L. & Casebeer, A. (2207)

Degree of CFI ( interaction, communication, info-sharing, coordination) is key driver of new product success
Source: Griffin and Hauser, 1992, 1996; Gupta, Raj and Wilemon, 1986. In: Troy, L. Hirunyawipada, T. & Paswan, A. (2008)

Dougherty showed that different “departmental thought worlds” — i.e. systems of common procedures, judgments and methods — exist in product innovation processes and that members of these thought worlds produce different interpretations of development priorities and tasks. Dougherty suggested collaboration mechanisms to unify these thought worlds and thereby reduce the divergence of interpretations.
Source: Dougherty (1992). In: Brun, E., & Saetre, A.S. (2008)

In order to exchange information externally and internally for better NPD, a firm requires employees to be spanning the boundaries of the firm to exchange information with other organizations.
Source: Ancona, D. & Caldwell, D. (1992). In: Frahm, J., Ireland, D.C., & Hine, D. (2007)

Table 1 Studies on Collaborative NPD lists 12 studies related to codevelopment and collaboration in new product development.
Source: See table 1. In: Emden, Z., Calantone, R.J. & Droge, C. (2006)

The sharing of designing responsibility and the exchange of information concerning the product has enabled the assemblers to improve time, cost, and quality performances.
Source: Clark, K. & Fujimoto, T. (1991). In: De Toni, A., & Nassimbeni, G. (2001)

Consideration of quality /features/benefits of products
Source: Heynard and Szymanski, 2001; Montoya- Weiss ad Caklantone, 1994). In: Troy, L. Hirunyawipada, T. & Paswan, A. (2008)

Musselwhite reported that over 80% of the projects using a cross-functional team met or exceeded commercial expectations-compared with 60% for projects headed by technical line management, 50% for technical project management, and only 20% for one-person operations.
Source: Musselwhite (1990). In: Spivey, W.A., Munson, J.M., & Wolcott, J.H. (1997)

One of the major reasons that concurrent engineering has gained broad acceptance is its impact on time. CE will get the manufacturing and marketing departments involved early in the development process. This will enable these departments to influence the design and obtain a more cost effective and high quality products. CE takes advantage of the latest advances in computer and information technologies to develop libraries with comprehensive accumulations of product and process designs. Therefore, knowledge gained during the development of one product is captured and then passed on to subsequent product developments as templates.
Source: Salomone (1995), Kamrani and Salhieh (2002). In: Kamrani, A., & Vijayan, A. (2006)

Organizational strength (strategy, skills, culture) as driver of new product success
Source: Heynard and Szymanski, 2001; Montoya-Weiss ad Caklantone, 1994). In: Troy, L. Hirunyawipada, T. & Paswan, A. (2008)