During development of an innovative product there is often considerable uncertainty about component production cost, and it is of interest for both the manufacturer and the supplier to engage in a collaborative effort to reduce this uncertainty and lower the expected cost. Despite the obvious...

We gather detailed data on organizational practices and information technology (IT) use at 253 firms to examine the hypothesis that external focus--the ability of a firm to detect and therefore respond to changes in its external operating environment--increases returns to IT, especially when...

The paper reports on an empirical study of the management of technological transitions. It focuses on project-level mechanisms for the generation of knowledge through experimentation and for its accumulation through individual experience. It proposes a model that links these mechanisms to...

This paper examines the effect on product development of project scope: the extent to which a new product is based on unique parts developed in-house. Using data from a larger study of product development in the world auto industry, the paper presents evidence on the impact of scope on lead time...

This paper focuses on the connection between product complexity and vertical integration using original empirical evidence from the auto industry. A rich literature has addressed the choice between internal production and external sourcing of components in the auto industry. More recent...

Overlapping development activities is widely used to reduce project completion times in product development. However, research on the applicability of the concept in different technological environments remains scarce. So far, very few industry-specific studies have statistically confirmed an...

We model a firm's decisions about product innovation, focusing on the extent to which features should be improved or changed in the succession of models that comprise a life cycle. We show that the structure of the internal and external environment in which a firm operates suggests when to...

This paper examines how knowledge is integrated in complex technology and product development settings. By framing the task of knowledge integration as a cycle, we highlight the inability of current knowledge transfer theories to explain the consequences that arise from the path-dependent nature...

This paper reports data from a study that seeks to characterize the differences in design structure between complex software products. We use design structure matrices (DSMs) to map dependencies between the elements of a design and define metrics that allow us to compare the structures of...

The paper proposes methods to measure the performance of research and development in new product development. We frame these measures in the context of evolving product families in the technology-based firm. Our goal is to more clearly understand the dynamics of platform renewal and derivative...