Concurrent engineering performance: Incremental versus radical innovation

This article analyzes the link between the use of concurrent engineering (CE) and success in new product development (NPD) under varying conditions of uncertainty and complexity--radical versus incremental innovations. Using linear regression, the results obtained indicate that overlapping activities, inter-functional integration and teamwork positively affect NPD performance in terms of development time and new product superiority in the case of incremental innovations and in terms of development cost in the case of radical innovations. The conclusion is that the use of CE should be contingent to the context or particular conditions which characterize each innovation process and the order of priority given to the objectives pursued.