Newness and Outcomes in Commodity-Driven New-Product Development Projects: A Survey in the Norwegian Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

Based on longtime experience in the global automotive industry, we have observed steadily higher expectations in the execution of product development projects regarding time, budget and quality. This is particularly challenging when different stakeholders, including customers, design, manufacturing and suppliers, impose changes to the agreed product content late in the project. This paper addresses commodity-driven automotive projects and the impact of externally and internally driven changes in the project content—which we denote ‘newness’—on performance outcomes. Aiming to falsify our initial hypothesis that such newness in project content during new product development will have negative impact on project outcomes, we examine data from Norwegian companies obtained by surveying their experience with project outcomes relative to imposed changes in content. The participants were asked about the different level of innovation and project specific circumstances perceived forming the basis for successful and unsuccessful project outcomes. The data show a significant positive correlation between newness and unsuccessful project outcomes, whose underlying factors are examined and discussed further in the paper.