Exploring the need for (extreme) speed: motivations for and outcomes of discontinuous NPD acceleration

ABSTRACT

New product development (NPD) speed is an important concern for firms in today’s fast-paced economy. While existing literature has focused on continuous NPD speed improvements, this paper explores discontinuous NPD acceleration, or dramatic reductions in development time relative to firms’ normal NPD cycles. Across two studies, the authors interview managers to develop a typology of strategic motivations for discontinuous NPD acceleration, followed by a survey of 218 NPD managers to validate the typology and identify important differences across firm types, including those in new product performance, innovation levels, and configurations of organisational characteristics. The results suggest that discontinuous NPD acceleration is most profitable when firms are proactive and have specific configurations of culture, capabilities, and structure. The authors also discuss implications for theory, practice, and future research.

KEYWORDS:

• New product development
• competitive strategy
• discontinuous NPD
• NPD acceleration
• mixed methods

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Actual company names are masked as a condition of cooperation.

2. Due to the nature of the panel service used, a traditional response rate could not be calculated.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthew B. Shaner

Matthew B. Shaner is an Assistant Professor of Marketing in the School of Business Administration at the University of Mississippi. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Tennessee in 2015. His work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Business Research and the Journal of Product Innovation Management.

Anton P. Fenik

Anton P. Fenik is an Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Seidman College of Business at Grand Valley State University. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee, and his scholarly expertise spans the marketing and supply chain functions of firms. His research has appeared in journals such as the Journal of Business Research, the Journal of International Marketing, and the Journal of Marketing Management.

Charles H. Noble

Charles H. Noble (PhD, Arizona State University) is the Henry Professor of Business and Associate Dean for Research and Faculty in the Haslam College of Business at The University of Tennessee. In addition, he currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Product Innovation Management, the premier research journal in the areas of new product development and innovation. He also holds a role as a Research Faculty member with the Centre for Services Leadership (Arizona State University). His research interests focus generally on front end design and development processes, as applied to both products and services. He has published in many leading journals including the Journal of Marketing, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Product Innovation Management, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Sloan Management Review and many others. He is on the editorial review boards of the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Product Innovation Management, and the Journal of Business Research. In his corporate life, Charles worked in strategic planning and corporate finance for leading retailers in the consumer electronics, home improvement, and warehouse club sectors.

Kang Bok Lee

Kang Bok Lee, PhD, is EBSCO Associate Professor of Business Analytics in the Raymond J. Harbert College of Business at Auburn University. His research interests include corporate governance and statistical modelling of organisational phenomena. He has published in journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Production and Operations Management, European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, European Journal of Marketing, Decision Sciences, Journal of Business Logistics, Public Administration Review, Journal of Economics and Finance, and Quantitative Finance and Economics.